Letters to the Editor
[Correspondents are requested to keep their letters as brief as is reasonably possib'e. The most suitable length is that of one of our " News of the Week " paritgraphs.'-LEd. SrEaramns.)
PROSPERITY IN AGRICULTURE
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—If I venture to break a lance with Lord Lymington, it is because I know him to be a real worker in the field of agri- culture and a formidable opponent. His virtiele in your last week's issue is characteristic of the neo-protectionism at its best, and he will not object to criticism.
Its whole argument is to me too slick and simple to be convincing—if one thinks. It is that, as the collapse of agri- culture has been due to free trade, protection, followed closely by better marketing, can give it prosperity as never before.
First,' is it really our " external policy of free food imports " which " has depressed agriculture in all competing countries " ? We were presented some days ago with three different reasons for the world collapse—the American Debt in the Govern- ment's first note, the workings of capitalism by Mr. Atlee, and by Sir Henry Page Croft, in their wireless debate, Free Trade and Socialist Finance. I expected it from the gallant General and was not disappointed, but will it do in serious argument ? Are the American farmers, suffering now so much more than ours, wrong in thinking that the cause of their suffering has more to do with their high protection than with our free trade ? And hai our rather heavy taxation of coffee saved it?
Then is it really helpful to draw the beautiful picture of our being self-supporting in livestock and its products and non- tropical fruit but, " if we put first things first " not in wheat and sugar—without any suggestion that this means the ruin of most Dominion agriculture? I am old fashioned enough not to like the idea of Dominion products being gradually pushed out of our markets, and inevitably denied access to any others by (to coin a word) our impinsular policy, but surely it must be fairly faced by Lord Lymington and his friends.
And though I try to believe with him that our farmers are willing to be organized and controlled simultaneously in milk, butter, cheese, Biteon, mutton, beef and poultry as soon as they obtain sufficient protection to guarantee them the 1927-29 prices, I cannot help wondering. I wish more landowners had had my experience (without the heart-break and loss) of trying to help farmers to organize, and that there were not in the new meat organization scheme of the National Farmers' Union two fatal flaws. I cannot help feeling that though the protection is to be real enough, the organization may remain rather shadowy. The late Minister of Agriculture, now safely translated to the Home Office, speaking to Scottish Conservatives a fortnight ago seemed to me to come nearer to common sense :—" When you organize your industry and make your efforts, and show that you can do it, then you can ask the Tariff Board to talk business—but don't talk rubbish."
And lastly can I as a country landowner be quite as sure as Lord Lymington that the towns will be permanently willing to pay more than they need for their food because they like our beautiful eyes ? Is no reform necessary in the structure of land holding, and in the administration of our land ? Would not even that better marketing which we both want so much, but which cannot come without the farmers' active co-operation and good will, become more probable if tenants were assured that its value on a change of tenancy. would not inevitably pass to the landowner ?—I am, Sir, &c.,
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