How to Make British Farming Pay

[The SPECTATOR—believing that the problem of putting the land to its best use is of primaty importance—has decided to open its colusnns to a full and frank discussion of the question. As a first step we shall publish in this and succeeding issues a challenging exposure by Sir Frank Fox, who took a notable part in the shaping of the agricultural policy of Australia. What Sir Frank writes will not necessarily represent the policy of the SPECTATOR : he has been allowed full freedom to state what is, in effect, an indictment of our neglect of the land.—

ED. SPECTATOR.]

ACITIZEN of the Overseas Empire looking upon the Home Country to-day hears the striking of the eleventh hour calling to the people to get to work in their vineyard. He feels that unless Great Britain can promptly apply her national common sense and genius for organization to the rescue of the agricultural industry, the days of her decline draw near, - and -her future greatest e3 p prt will be men and women, who find livelihood impossible even in subsidized houses and on doles.

"F There is no reasonable hope of largely extending employment in British manufactures, for competition is growing up everywhere, and not least in our Overseas Dominions. But there is a reasonable fear that manu- facturing employment may dwindle further if export industries have to continue to carry the burden of supporting a million and a half or more of unemployed. If the land of Great Britain were used as intelligently as it is in other European countries, it could find direct employment for another half million families at least. Such an increase would still leave the Kingdom -in an inferior position as regards employment in agriculture to that of 1851, when 1,625,482 people were employed on ' its land; That is the position as I see it : there is no reasonable hope of absorbing the British unemployed in manu- facturing industries ; no reasonable hope that our manufacturing industries can continue- much longer -to carry the burden of maintaining those unemployed ; no sure prospect of finding room for our surplus population in the Empire overseas ; but a certainty that our own homeland could provide relief. But it is the eleventh hour.

THE LAND PROGRAMMES.

What to do ? There are three remedies, or " land programmes," before the people to-day :- 1 1. The Labour Party programme of - immediate Socialism (Mr. Ramsay MacDonald gives six months as the necessary period for nationalizing the land I) combined with state control of agricultural imports, which could be used to impose a prohibitive degree of Protection.

2. The Liberal Party programme, the full gospel of which is set forth in -the Green Book of Mr. Lloyd George and the much diluted gospel of the Blue Book, representing the compromise between Mr. Lloyd George 'and Lord Oxford for the sake of peace and quiet. Since Lord Oxford has taken another- path to peace and quiet it is safe to presume that the - Liberal Party programme will in the -natural course of events revert to the Green Book. That proposes almost- as complete a system of land nationalization as the Labour Party programme, but has no - -provision, direct or indirect, for protection against agricultural imports. .

3. The Conservative Party programme, which is not so much a programme as an attitude of dignified help- lessness, rejecting quack remedies but proposing little by way of alternative. It does, however, • suggest hontoeopathic doses of agricultural education and agricultural reorganization. It expressly excludes general Protection against agricultural imports and subsidies 'home production, not, one may fairly suggest, on tlx 'ground that. it has no faith in those prescriptions, b because the country will not endorse them.

With these proposals I hope to deal in future articles in some detail, whilst endeavouring to indicate a practical land policy; This opening article I ask to be taken as if it were a "- second reading " speech : with " Coni mittee discussion " to follow on land ownership, land titles, marketing, the transport of agricultural produe4 agricultural education, co-operation for buying an selling, taxation, wages, and whether it is necessary to give sheltered markets by some restriction of forei imports.

I shall try to keep as clear as possible of party politi issues. In my opinion the British land question sho not in any way be bound up with another great questio that of " Imperial Preference." It is a national, n an Imperial question, except, of- course, so far the greater safety of the Mother Country, arising Iron a greater economic security, •is a matter of importan to all the Empire. • POLITICAL CANT.

But political cant must be discussed, because it is of the fibre of the question to exorcise political cant even though that is to sweep away the very basis the programmes of the Liberal Party and of the Lab Party—the cry of " The Land for the People." Th is a cant cry, " an invocation to call fools into a circle. It is based on the fiction that there are idle British acres ready to burst into productivity if only lan hungry men were not kept from -them by se monopolists. That is not the position at all : thou at any political 'fleeting thousands will acclaim nonsent such as " The Land_,Song," which was the Hymn d Hate of the Radicals during the pre-War Land Campaign :— — "When the landlords tried to trample on the poor, When the hungry man was cursed For the crust he humbly craved, As he staggered to the open workhouse door.

Let who will against our liberties conspire, Strong are arms and hearts and we shall never tire ; We will overwhelm thom all with vengeance dire As we go marching on..

Too long has grim Monopoly Opposed our sacred cause ; Too long, too long we've borne the yoke Of its enslaving laws.

Confiding in our champions, - We'll lay the menace low, Nor stay our hands till we've dispersed The craven Tory foe ! "

There is in Great Britain no issue of " The Land the People," no " grim monopoly " holding up latx prices. Agricultural land here is cheaper than in 801 country of the world of which I have knowledge what a fair comparison can be reached giving consideratiod to quality and accessibility. It is, in truth, " cheap," and that indicates much of the evil.

To-day an agricultural estate " within easy dista of London " is advertised- in the Times at £25 per ae Within this week I had a visit from a -widow who 0 a first-class small agricultural farm within forty nil of London. She can get- no more than fifteen chilli per acre per year rent (and that- little-more than pall • the tithe, &c.). The assessed value is under £18 - acre,- including buildings. I have a note, of an Eng' agricultural estate sold (before the War) at £4 - per acre, including buildings. Yet the average value all land under crop in New South Wales, with in310°I. ments, is £120 per acre, and in Victoria £100 per acre cording to official _statistics.

IDEALS AND REALITY.

Nor is it (unfortunately) true that there are numbers of land-hungry men in England who are only kept m becoming prosperous agriculturists by land onopoly. Doubtless if a reader of the Spectator were o question the folk he meets, he would find several who have an ambition to " go on the land " and become tout yeomen, their country's pride. But most of them ave a purely idealistic conception of what " going on the land" means. The number of people in England ho want to go on the land, who have any real idea of hat they would do if they got on the land, and who re prevented from going on the land, is infinitesimal. " The Land Song " and the political programmes ased on the theory of " landlordism "—the holding up f the land from the people by a grim monopoly—must e put aside as offering no solution. It is a pity in a -ay. Such a solution, the extermination of landlords, (add be so . easy—one Act of Parliament to banish iem ; and if it actually would bring back the land o prosperity, perhaps many landlords would not egrudge the price : they are rather addicted to atriotism as a class.

NOT AN EASY TASK.

The real question is to find people for the land ; to ake land cultivation profitable enough to attract en and women to it as a means of livelihood ; and train them,. organize them, so that, given reasonable 'ndustry and intelligence, they will succeed. The fact, , must be faced that it is not an easy task but a task hich must be undertaken in a spirit of high endeavour d moral earnestness and sincerity. In all other countries but Great Britain the farmer carries on his work with the aid of various subsidies, direct or indirect, such as tariff protection to secure.him a favoured position in his home market, low railway rates for his produce, cheap credit for his financial operations, and State assistance to co-operative institutions which- help him both as a seller and a buyer. Even so, there is a tendency in those countries for people to drift away from the land towards city life. That is noticeable in Australia ; and in the United States (where I note a recent calculation that 7.3 per cent. of the farming population in 1922 deserted the land) ; and even in France, where the love of the land used to be almost terrible in its intensity.

Thus countries which have made it their uninterrupted policy to encourage the people towards the land find to-day reason to fear that the cities are drawing away the agricultural population. Great Britain has for generations pursued the opposite. policy—except for a brief interval during the years of the Great War—and must recognize that the problem of the regeneration .of rural England is one of such seriousness that it can be solved only by courageous, honest patriotism kept clear of party politics.

With patriotism, and with the unsurpassed British genius • for organization, the problem can be solved. These good 'stones there are for foundations : a soil above the European average in fertility ; a climate which is, on the whole, favourable to agriculture ; a people in whom still survives an instinctive liking of the land ; and a countryside—the heritage passed down by our farmer forefathers—which is the most lovable in all the world for quiet, gracious charm.

FRANK FOX.

(Sir Frank Fox's article next week will deal with land ownership.)