Pigs and Prices N OT much fresh light has been thrown
on the Ottawa agreements by the debates in the House of Commons, though Sir Herbert Samuel elucidated one obscure point by extracting from Mr. Malcolm MacDonald the statement that when imports of foreign meat are limited by quota to a certain maximum that 'maximum is a figure the Government is free to reduce at will. Instead therefore of letting South American exporters know the worst the Ottawa accords alt} the. subsequent decisions only let. them know the best. The worst may be still to come, and it may come at any moment and for any reason, good or bad. So interpreted, Ottawa inevitably has the effect of importing uncertainty and instability into the most important export trade of a country with which we are peculiarly anxious to maintain friendly relations, at a time when that trade like all others needs stability beyond anything else.
Apart from that the debates at Westminster have served to marshal the various Ottawa decisions in a more or less orderly array before the eyes of persons in the House of Commons and out of it who had never yet applied themselves to the task of casting up a compre- hensive balance-sheet. No such gain and loss account can he formulated here, but it is worth while recalling the main changes this country will be called on to make in its tariffs when the Ottawa agreements are ratified. New or increased duties are to be levied on such com- modities as wheat, rice, butter,heese, eggs, condensed milk and various kinds of fruit, other than Dominion sources. Practically all these commodities form the food of the poor. In these cases it is open to the British Government (though Canada at one moment appeared to ". think otherwise) to reduce or remove the duty when it chooses. But on a further range of articles, including foods, raw materials and manufactured articles (among' them wheat flour, timber, leather, lead and zinc) this country has undertaken to maintain a 10 per cent. duty for five years. The constitutional question involved in that undertaking is an issue that stands by itself. It is of more practical value to consider how far the pledge ties the hands of the British Government in the discussions impending at the World Economic Conference. In regard to that exaggeration is to be deprecated. Over a substantial range of foodstuffs the Government's hands will be tied. Over most manufactured goods they will not. Much more important is the question whether the Government in fact considers itself free to reduce or abolish, as part of a bargain for lower tariffs elsewhere, duties regarding whose maintenance no undertaking has been giVen, though so long as they are maintained they confer on the Dominions (whose goods come in free) a substantial preference. If those duties are not to be varied we undoubtedly go fettered into the World Conference. If they are, some Dominions will certainly not hesitate to level charges of broken faith. That unsatis- -factory situation—unsatisfactory either way—undeniably • exists.
Apart from the general Ottawa agreements, based as they are on the familiar machinery of tariffs and prefer- ences, stands the action to be taken regarding various meat products, notably frozen beef, mutton and lamb, chilled beef and bacon. Here the quota system is invoked. There is to be no tariff, but imports are to be limited, in the interests, in the ease of beef, mutton and lamb, of the Dominion farmer (the English farmer will gain nothing, for the poor man who eats frozen or chilled meat will not change to English, which he can never afford), and in the case of bacon, of both the Dominion and the. home producer.. That, the limitation of impl,:ts will send up prices needs no demonstration. The aro w;.11. and desclarecl object of the project is to increase priees, and the suggestion that a rise in wholesale price need upt be followed by a rise in retail runs clean counter AO all, experience everywhere. Prices to the poorest sections of. our population are to be artificially increased for the benefit of Canadian and Australian stock-breeders. How far the emotions aroused by that fact, when it is driven home week by week in the shops and markets where the poor buy their meat, will act as cement of Empire may well be doubted. Those, including members of the present Government, who declared against fresh taxes on food, may live to regret that their ban was not laid, and maintained, on this indirect form of price- raising too.
Bacon stands in another category. Here the aim is different. The i Do minion producer, who, in fact, pro- duces very little, is to gain something, but the aim set before the Reorganization Commission on whose report (published on •Tuesday) final arrangements with the Dominions were to depend, was the production in this country of a largely increased proportion of the bacon this country consumes. If the aim can be achieved new prosperity will be conferred on an important branch of agriculture with considerable potentiality for expansion. As an end in itself that is 'in the highest degree 'desirable. The maintenance of a rural populaticin in Great Britain is as much a matter of moral health as of economics. The balance between agriculture and industry in these islands has swung far towards industry and will never now swing far back. But it may swing some way back. The farmer's condition to-day is desperate, and though agriculture may not be much worse off, when all is said, than the mines or the •shipyards, that is no reason for not doing everything reasonably possible to put farming on its feet. The only question is what price we can afford to pay for the operation.
That question is raised directly by the Pig Commission report. Measures are recommended, involving a for- midable hierarchy of committees and boards at every stage, designed to double the British production of bacon in some two and a half years, an essential ingredient in the process being the progressive limitation of foreign imports —mainly, of course, Danish. The farmer is to be helped in two ways, by increase of price and by stabilization of price. The latter is by far 'the more important. If it can be achieved at a level which pays the producer and lays a burden neither heavy -nor 'permanent—the datum figure being taken at sornething: above the present abnormally depressed level-on the consumer, then the scheme, with its elaborate' provision for marketing and the rationalization' of the factories, deserves full and sym- pathetic c•:.:;. nsideration.. It 'is highly complicated; and no premature verdict Can be passed on it. Everything hangs on Whether it i's used to shelter inefficient producers or to bring the bacon indUstry in this country to a pitch of efficiency it has never yet come near attaining. Many of its recommendations have this as their definite objective. If- adopted they- will give the farmer an assured outlet for his pigs, and secure to the factories a steady supply of animals of a breed suited to their needs. Once the plan is in operation there should be no reason for any substantial rise in price to the consumer. That ulti- mately is- the touchstone. !-'or there can never be justification for measures -condemning the ..industrial population of this country to buy worse bacon at a .higher price.
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