NEW CRIMES FOR OLD [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIRS Lord Astor states that I am wrong in believing that under the Marketing Act a board could not restrict pro- duction, but I am under no such misapprehension. I am not defending the Marketing Act but the Scottish Milk Marketing Scheme based on that Act, and in it the promoters have proposed no powers to enable the Board to restrict production.
I cannot help thinking that Lord Astor's objections to the Marketing Act itself have led him to condemn the Scottish Scheme without the careful study that it merits. The Marketing Act is an enabling Act, and, just as the directors of a company incorporated under the Companies Act are bound by each individual company's articles of association, so will the powers of the Scottish Milk Marketing Board be limited to those conferred on it by the Scheme itself, and I repeat that it will be beyond the power of the Board to restrict production.
I agree with Lord Astor that a guaranteed price necessitates
a guaranteed buyer, but the Scottish Scheme holds out no promise of a guaranteed price. It does, however, offer a guaranteed market at an average price, and the Board is bound to accept every gallon of milk, of the requisite standard of quality, tendered to it by registered producers. The Board will, no doubt, dispose of the requirements of the liquid milk market through the usual channels, and will arrange for the surplus to be manufactured into milk products, paying to producers the average price obtained for the whole output. Is this not just orderly marketing ?
If the Board fixes too high a price for liquid milk the public will not buy or will at least restrict its purchase, and the Board will require to manufacture a larger surplus which will immediately lower the average price payable to producers.
Milk producers can hardly prevent a change over to dairying by farmers who are losing money on meat ; to do so would involve a restrictive scheme of which I am sure Lord Astor would disapprove; but I submit, that for dairy farmers to consent to remain in depression beciuse of the danger of inducing others to take up dairying would be a policy of despair. In any case, while we import such huge quantities of dairy products, milk production in this country must be
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