The Millers and the Quota Members of the corn trade
deputation that waited on Mr. J. H. Thomas to discuss the proposed wheat quota appear to have had the experience of their lives. If only a talking film could be made of Mr. Thomas receiving a deputation, for comparison with one representing, say, Sir Samuel Hoare conducting a similar ceremony, it would constitute invaluable material for a thesis on the deportment of Cabinet Ministers. The upshot of the millers' interview was the issue of "an agreed Statement" announcing the willingness of the millers to work the quota, followed twenty-four hours later by a battery of newspaper advertisements (inserted by the British and Irish Millers' Association) declaring the millers as resolutely opposed to the quota as ever. That mystery must be left to solve itself. But when the Dominion Secretary declares the Government will be dictated to neither by the Trades Union Congress nor by the millers, it is reasonable to ask whether there is any precedent for saddling one industry, at considerable inconvenience to itself, with the administration of a scheme it disapproves of for the sole benefit of another industry. To say that is not necessarily to condemn the quota system, but it is going rather far to denounce as dictation a protest against the compulsory enlistment. of the millers' services. Difficulties in the way of working both the home and the Dominion quotas look like multiplying. What Canada and Australia, which between them produce three times the British consumption Of wheat, hope to get by a quota of 55 per cent. of the consumption at world prices is hard to see. But whatever it is Mr. Thomas says they must give a quid pro quo for it.
