Norfolk Farmers' Plight While the Norfolk branch of the National
Farmers' Union has advised its members to dismiss 6,000 men next week, the Union itself takes strong exception to so desperate a policy. Where the farmers' own society is in two minds about the question, the public may well be in doubt. Norfolk has admittedly been very hard hit by the fall in cereal prices. It will derive some benefit from the wheat quota, but it has lost heavily through the declining demand for barley, now that the high beer tax has reduced the consumption of beer. The duty on foreign barley has proved useless to steady the market. The fact remains that the farmers feel unable to pay the Ms. a week fixed by the County Wages Board. Fixed wages and slumping prices create a very real problem, but now that agriculture is at last receiving serious attention from all parties, this is the last of all possible moments for a virtual lock-out that would prejudice large classes of the urban population against the farmers.
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