Agriculture a nd the Tariff
IATHETHER ive believe that this island of Great V Britain is over-populated to the point of injury or not, there is no doubt that the population is ill-distributed now between town and country. This does no good to the general level of physical standards (nor of moral standards, but that is'a matter bristling with difficulties upon which we cannot enter to-day). If the towns are not to decay they must be fed with fresh blood from the country dis- tricts even to keep up their numbers, let alone their quality. If any one needs proof of the need of physical end moral quality supplied from the country to London, let him study the sources of the recruitment of the Metro- politan Police. it is conceivable that a country could be so prosperously industrialized that for home-grown food foreign supplies could be substituted entirely, as they are in a great part here to-day. But the supply of country- raised human material is vitally necessary.
To keep this country stock thriving on the land there must be a living to be earned from the land, which means that agriculture must " pay." A century ago this end was supposed to be satisfactorily attained by corn duties rising to 100s. Were the country labourers ever so miserable before or since ? Even if part of this misery can be justly ascribed to the selfishness of some who did take profits then from agriculture, the price of the food which the labourer helped to grow was alone enough to depress the country's stock : it starved amid plenty. The historian will not base his faith in tariffs on foodstuffs upon past history. How- ever, the rural labourer need not be afraid of the price of food ever soaring again to those heights through any legis- lation in this country to-day. The masses of urban voters will see that their food costs as little as may be. The agriculturist may think them selfishly determined to keep his wages down, but at any rate they will keep down for him the price of food that he must pay for in cash.
For the past ninety years the rural landlord, the farmer, and the labourer, the three partners in our greatest indus- try, have been less favoured by legislation than any other large classes. In spite of some remissions of taxation and more of rates, these demands have been scarcely tolerable. The policy which, we cannot deny, has been adopted for the good of the greatest number, the town dwellers, has borne hardly on them in keeping down the price of food, though that again rebounds in their favour. The farmer has felt most hardly the effect of the so-called social legis- lation by which he is bound to pay the labourer minimum wages that are not always covered by the competitive price of the produce of the labour. We are to try a new scheme, a tariff that will help agriculture and not raise the Price of food : by all economic history a flat contradiction. We hope that good may come of it, but now, as always, we bid the agriculturist trust more to his own efforts than to laws and tariffs. And let the labourer remember that, though he may envy the higher cash wages of the towns- man, he has great advantages over him in health, low rents, productive gardens, &c. The tariff may give con- fidence to the farmer, and that will be half the battle, the battle that he must still fight himself. But if we examine it, we must warn him that the tariff will not immediately or automatically put money In-his pocket. To begin with, three. of his .staple products- are exempt,- wheat, meat and
wool. Then the tariff includes duties on much that he buys. Some of his costs will rise. Even maize is not at present exempt, though it comes here mainly as a raw material of the stock feeder, and as the farmer does not raise it or sell it, his whole interest lies in its cheapness. Further, the Imperial Conference at Ottawa in the summer may upset calculations based on this tariff. We hope that good will come for all out of that Conference, but the Dominions will naturally fight for themselves against the agriculturist at home if their interests should clash. Again, there is a growing feeling that there are sound reasons why we should favour proposals for revising our treaties that contain the Most-Favoured-Nation Clause in order to make special arrangements with one or two countries outside the Empire, notably Denmark and Argentina. We will not argue for or against those arrange- ments to-day, but we must admit that the attraction that they have for us is not that freer trade with those food- exporting countries will bring direct benefit to the British agriculturist.
. Let the farmer use the tariff where he can to his advan- tage, resisting its temptation to change his crops unnatur- ally, just as he must not let the " quota " tempt him to lay down to wheat land that has never borne profitable corn crops since the repeal of the Corn Laws. But again and again we say that he must rely on his own efforts, by which he can improve his position in many ways. We do not mean merely by harder work, by whole families work- ing from dawn to dusk, as in Denmark. For years we have urged him not to look askance as he does at co-opera- tion. Co-operative buying and selling and ownership of machinery will alone let the small farmer compete with the prairie farmer, and will alone induce the " common carriers " to give rates which they cannot or will not give to irregular little parcels. The work that Sir Horace Plunkett did in Ireland can be done again. The work that Mr. Robert Yerburgh tried to do should be carried on : his Agricultural Organization Society was one of the hopes of British farming, and we deeply regretted that, when its body was swallowed by the National Farmers' Union, its spirit did not seem to be absorbed in the Union. In this sphere of organization, which includes co-operation, the Government promises help. The farmer must rise to the offer, and rise with the energy that will make him, not the bureaucrat, but the leader. There is the marketing of milk; much as we dread any monopoly, we confess an admira- tion for the distributive organization of the United Dairies Company, and the farmer might do worse by upsetting it, but he ought to have kept the control with which he parted. In the marketing of bacon the Government offers to help. Existing co-operative factories are highly success- ful but lamentably few. In these the farmer, small- holder and cottager can join, and all may suck out advan- tage. To these movements far more than to the tariff we look for benefits for the farmer, and in them he can best make his own self-reliant efforts tell. We will not grudge him his grumbling at the weather and the Government if that helps him to make of his hard life the success that is possible, and the British agriculturist may well be stirred to effort, not only by his lawful hope of gain, but also by knowing that the country looks to him rather. than to the townsman to keep up the standards of our race.
Previous page
