284 Food Production and English Land [April 26, 



bold enough to fix it at 25s. a week ; for the present the County 

 Wa^es Committees are beginning with 30s. Lastly, the Corn Pro- 

 duction Act takes power to ensure the proper user of the land ; if a 

 tenant will not farm properly, or a landlord prefers game to corn, he 

 can be turned out and someone put in who will employ the land in 

 the national interest as well as his own. Ear-reaching principles 

 these, revolutionary in their economics ; but have they any sound 

 financial basis ? The land has after all to pay either for arable cultiva- 

 tion or minimum wages ; can the land pay for these ideals ? Time is 

 too limited to go far into that question. I will only lay before you 

 one consideration. The agricultural labourer before the war, as 

 Mr. A eland has pointed out, did actually produce more stuff net out 

 of which he and his master had to be paid than did the industrial 

 worker, the cotton-spinner, or the steel-maker. His output was 

 worth about 100?. a year net, out of which his wages had to be 

 paid. The average farmer in England was in fact living upon the 

 earnings of five or six men ; he wanted a big return per man because 

 he employed so few. Here, then, are the openings for economy in the 

 new order : better organisation so that the man has not to carry so 

 big a fraction as a master ; better efficiency so that the output of the 

 man is greater. 



Time does not permit of the consideration of these latter points, 

 organisation and efficiency. Here we should all agree that education 

 and research have their part to play in the reconstruction, as great, if 

 not greater, than the fiscal and legislative matters of which I have 

 been speaking. "We began with considering that the nation must 

 grow food in order to survive as a nation : we end with the concep- 

 tion that the nation must grow men with brains if it is to have food. 



[A. D. H.] 



