The Organisation of the Industry;. 19 



increase their earning"s by organisation, the process would 

 undoubtedly have been accelerated. We may agree that 

 it is in the best interests of the community considered 

 from the social standpoint, that there should be a larger 

 proportion of our people engaged in agriculture and 

 leading the more settled and stable life which a rural 

 community proA'ides, but that is limited by the economic 

 power of the industry to maintain its workers at a 

 reasonable standard of existence, with proper social 

 opportunities. A larger agricultural population living at 

 the level of our agricultural workers during the past 

 generation would not have been a source of strength to 

 any community. 



Both lines of criticism are sound only so far as it can 

 be shown that in the situation facing the farmers in this 

 country they failed tO' cultivate as much of the land as 

 they could with economic advantage, and that they 

 failed to retain the workers necessary for this greater 

 cultivation, and to give the workers such a standard of 

 living as made it possible for them to remain in the 

 industry. Here we enter on very debatable ground. 

 Farming cannot be tested like other industries. It is 

 conducted in the main by a large number of private 

 capitalists whose returns are not published and whose 

 incomes do not come for taxation purposes under any 

 review which enables reliable statistics to be collected. It 

 would almost seem that farmers are rather proud of the 

 fact that they do not keep books. They are secretive 

 and notoriously unwilling to admit that they ever make 

 profits. Anyone reading the evidence led by well known 



