482 AGRICULTURAL CREDIT.—DAVIDSON. 
coming on any steamer from St. John or Halifax to Liverpool 
during the year, to pay all freight charges on poultry shipped to 
Montreal in excess of one dollar per hundred pounds. On the 
other side of the Atlantic, almost equal care and anxiety is 
shown by the agents of the department that the produce of 
Canadian farms shall receive the best price and gain the best 
reputation that can be obtained. 
It is no wonder that the president of a Farmers’ Supply 
Association in the old country, with whom I had some corres- 
pondence in relation to this report, should declare that in the 
provision of facilities of all kinds the Canadian farmer is a full 
generation ahead of the farmer in the motherland. 
But it may be asked why should the Government not go one 
step further and adopt the Australasian policy of assisting the 
farmer in producing as well asin marketing? Why not lend 
the credit of the state to the farmer to enable him to borrow 
money more cheaply to make improvements or simply to make 
the business of farming profitable? It is true that we need not 
trouble ourselves much about words, for if state lending on mort- 
gage is socialistic, what shall we say about the manifold activi- 
ties of the agricultural departments? The New Zealander has 
not been frightened at the word, and indeed declares that the 
epithet is misapplied. The essence of socialism is state owner- 
ship of the means of production, and the effect of this kind of 
state activity is to establish individual ownership more firmly. 
The New Zealander is of the opinion, according to Mr. Lloyd 
(Newest England, p. 375) that his action simply amounts to “the 
state giving its principal efforts to the stimulation, as a silent 
partner, wise counsellor and democratic co-operator, of the 
enterprise and industry of the individual.’ It may, moreover, 
be easily argued that in a democratic country, government aid is 
simply a highly organized form of self-help, that the people are 
using the machinery of the state for the ends for which it was 
devised, viz., the good of the citizens. 
This is true, At times we may look at things in this way, 
