BOOKS.
BRITISH AGRICULTURE : THE NATION'S OPPORTUNITY.* " It has been said that ' the history of English agriesdture is the history of a series of changes from amble to pasture and from pasture to amble.' How far can this statement be justified ? "
Tax present writer remembers encountering a question of this kind in an examination-paper in the Oxford History School some thirty years ago. It is now his fortune (or shall he say misfortune ?) to see the initial stages of one of these great revolutions of the agricultural wheel. Among the buglers or foretellers of the approaching change. none are abler or more competent to blow " Reveilli " than the persons responsible for the book before us, the signatories of the Minority Report of the Departmental Committee on the Employment of Sailors and Soldiers on the Land—Mr. E. G. Strutt, Mr. Leslie Scott, and Mr. G. H. Roberts. A pedant may say that the three persons just named have stepped far outside their reference in writing, as they have done, a work on British agriculture and the nation's opportunity. We do not judge them so. On the contrary, we hold that they did a national service in not trying to evade, as public inquirers too often do, the responsibili- ties of inquiry by saying that all the things that matter are outside their reference. They have boldly grappled the essential issue—an issue that faced them the moment they opened their investigations. That essential issue is one which we, as Free Traders, are especially bound to consider. It may be stated for our purpose in a very few words. At the beginning of the Tariff Reform controversy the Spectator declared in plain terms what was in its opinion the only sound, logical, and consistent argument which could be brought forward against the economic argument of Free Exchange. That was the " State of Siege " argument. In the abstract, and if the paramount desire were to get the best economic results, trade must be left free, the maximum of exchanges being promoted by such freedom. Wealth was the desire of every community, whether considered severally or collectively, and Free Exchange was the instrument for obtaining it. We pointed out, however, that in the abstract there was one consideration which overrode all economic arguments, and that was the safety and welfare of the community. There are circumstances in which it is much better to be safe than to be rich, to be a self-supporting community rather than a wealthy one. In regard to this we then held two opinions. First, we held that these islands were too thickly populated to make it possible for them to produce all the food needed. That appeared to us to meet the " State of Siege " argument completely. Therefore it was • British Agriculture : the Nation's Opportunity. Dew the 31inority Report of the Departmental Conunittee on the Employment of Sailors and Soldiers on the Land. By the Hon. Edward G. StnItt, Leslie Scott, K.C., 3LP., and G. Ii. Itoberta, M.P. London: John Murray. [3.1. dd. net.] .better to rely upon our Mercantile Marine for feeding us than to reduce our population and our wealth by insisting that corn should be grown
here at an economic loss compared with the production of something else in these islands to exchange for corn. We were strengthened in this argument by the fact that our Tariff Reform opponents did not in effect propose to grow all our corn here. In the last r.sart they only asked for
a tax on manufactured articles, and, with a spirit which we admit was truly Imperial, desired that the corn should still come to us from
overseas subject to a very small impost. They wished, however, to give a preference to Colonial products which would ensure that our corn and other food supplies should come from the Dominions rather than from foreign States, In fact they rejected the " State of Siege " argument almost as completely as we did. They did not contemplate our main supplies of corn being other than sea-borne.
In any case, we admit that we were wrong. We did not attach to the " State of Siege " argument the importance that we ought to have attached to it, and we attached too much importance to the obtaining of national wealth by the quickest and easiest road—by the line of economic least resistance. To put the thing in a concrete form, we did not appreciate the power of the submarine. We thought that if we maintained an invincible Navy above sea, we were secure from food shortage, and need not trouble whether our corn were grown in Sas- katchewan or in Suffolk. Experience has shown that an enemy whose battleships dare not come out of port, or if they do can be easily com- pelled to run back again, may yet be able to interfere so seriously with our shipping and with our supplies as to put us in great peril. Therefore we have come to the conclusion that to make ourselves safe—we are not among those who think that this is the last war in the world—it is necessary to pay imperative attention to the " State of Siege " argument and to grow as much of the food we require as is possible within our own borders. We cannot grow it all ; but wo can grow enough to minimize our dependence upon oversee supplies, and so reach a position There home production, plus a reasonable scheme of storage, will secure us from the risks which we are running at this moment. What is the logical consequence of the " State of Siege " argument as we accept it ? To put it shortly, it is the reversion from pasture to arable spoken of in the question in the history paper which wo have placed at the head of this article.
The work before us, British Agriculture : the Nation's Opportunity, is in effect an effort to show the most practical way of accomplishing this reversion. The book wisely refuses to make any attempt to regard the revival of tillage in this country as a by-product of a demobilization scheme, and goes boldly to the question how to accomplish a complete rural revolution. Here again it will be said by a cynic to hit the Spectator particularly hard. Not only are we asked, as it were, to abandon Free Trade at a point where most Free Traders would have held their system to be best assured—i.e., Free Trade in food—but to use the minimum wage as an instrument for the overthrow of Free Exchange. Strange as it may seem to many of our readers, though we cannot admit ourselves wholly converted to this proposal, we see a great deal of force in the demand made by the writers of the book upon this point. We will even go so far as to say that we think it probable that if there must be State interference in order to achieve national safety through a greater pro- duction of food, it may be necessary to perform the breakage of economic laws handsomely in the domain of agriculture. The ground for a mini. mum wage in agriculture can easily be stated. You are not going to put another five or six million acres of pasture or semi-waste into tillage without a very large increase in the number of labourers employed upon the land. But we shall not obtain more labourers for the land unless they are paid a far better wage than such labourers are paid at present. And now comes the crucial point. The authors of the work before us insist that it is exceedingly difficult to make farmers, who have been confined by necessity during two generations to low and depressed views as to the wages-bill, give higher wages by a violent nudge from the State. Low wages for agricultural work are a kind of bad custom. Like the bucket in a well rather than the water-main and the tap as a means for getting water, or (shall we say ?) like a rural dialect, they are hard things to do away with. Our authors hold further that higher wages would not in reality prove uneconomic, would make little or no difference to farmers' profits, and might very likely increase them by increasing the efficiency of labour. At the same time they realize that the farmer will not give higher wages unless he is compelled to do so.
But perhaps we are putting the cart before the horse in thus dealing with the labour problem. It is clear that something has got to be done in order to induce the farmer to make the dirt fly, or, rather, the plough run, and break up the pasture which during the past thirty or forty years has been laid down to grass. There are various ways of doing this ; but the main poi.:.t is of course to secure the farmer a living profit, or the equivalent of a minimum wage. He must feel that if he goes in for the cultivation of wheat he will not be sent into the Bankruptcy Court by a sudden fall in prices. He must have the security of a stable market. Such security would be ensured, our authors think, by a minimum price for wheat of, ray, 42s. a quarter. The problem then is somehow or other to secure the farmer getting that price. As an illustration, they want the law to secure the cultivator another 10s. a quarter, just as the Summer Time Law has secured him another hour's daylight during half the year. One way of doing this is for the Government to guarantee that they will make up
the difference between the market price and, say, 42s. Another plan is to give a premium or bounty upon all tillage, or upon the breaking up of pasture. The third plan is a tax on foreign wheat. All these plans are unfortunately open to many great objections. Our authors incline to a combination of the minimum price and a tariff. Possibly they are right ; but we are bound to say for ourselves that we like best the idea of a bounty on the production of wheat, whether on new or old lands. The great advantage of a bounty is that you know exactly what you are paying. Also the effect of a bounty is to make things cheaper for the consumer, not dearer. If, however, a bounty is arranged, it must be so arranged as to help the Dominions as well as ourselves. The "State of Siege " argument, being an anti-submarine argument, affects Dominion wheat as well as foreign wheat. At the same time, and on wider grounds, that which is grown in the Empire is much more valuable during war than foreign wheat. Embargoes and other acts known in the Charter-Partics as "Restraint of Princes" will affect foreign supplies when they will not affect those from the nations within the Empire.
Besides the point we have just raised there are dozens of other matters of deep interest concerning British agriculture which are touched upon in the book before us. For example, we should like very much to discuss the cottage problem, and also what we may call the problem of the virtuous moneylender—a matter in our view of vital importance. The sugar problem is also of great moment. We will, however, only say hero in regard to the cottages that the solution must be one based upon cheap construction ; while as for the sugar, though we see the advantages of home-grown sugar, it is difficult to make the demand for it compatible with the demand for home-grown wheat. Could enough land be found for both ? Bread comes before fancy biscuits, and certainly before " best lump." But perhaps we shall be told that there is a certain amount of land which will grow beet which will not grow corn. In any case this is a matter to which the legal phrase Cur : volt adv : applies (Curia atilt advieeri, the Court desires further consideration of this point).
We have noticed very few omissions or instances of inadequate treat- ment in this Report. There is one, however, which may be mentioned, We do not think that sufficient importance is given to the question of local taxation. The point is mentioned, it is true, but a good deal more should have been made of it. Agriculture has always been most unfairly treated in the matter of taxation, local and Im perial. The rates have practically become an Inhabited House Duty. In other words, every- thing, except houses and agriculture, has slipped the collar in the case of the rates, which were not only intended to be, but once were, a regular local Income Tax. This is a monstrous injustice. Again, land has been most unfairly treated in the matter of Income Tax itself, though here it is the landlord and not the farmer who has suffered, There are people to-day paying huge sums in Income Tax on the business of landowning—and it is a business—who receive literally nothing in the way of profit from their estates. In every other business except landowning all the outgoings are deducted, and only bond-fide profits—i.e., net income—are subjected to taxation. In the case of land it is a nominal, not a real, income upon which the owner pays. This was bad enough when the Income Tax was two shillings or half-a- crown. It is a terrible injustice when it stands at five shillings, or in the case of the larger Super Tax payer at something very near ten shillings.
In spite of the length of this review, we have only touched upon a fringe of tho subject. Its interest and importance are, however, so great that we unhesitatingly advise our readers to turn to this book, and turn to it with an open mind. If it does not convert them— remember, we do not profess ourselves to be wholly converted, though much moved—they will certainly find abundant food for thought and argument. It is essentially an honest book, the outcome of a sincere desire to do the best for the country. In no sense is it a work intended to benefit a particular industry, a book open to the satirist's objection that it comes from minds imbued with the notion that if agriculture and the interests of an agricultural aristocracy are secure, then of course the nation must be secure also.
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