NEED OF ORGANISATION 87 



Farming " can be brought about only by education — comprises 

 many things, organisation itself being one of them. So large, in 

 fact, is the task set that other factors besides the collective effort 

 of those to be benefited by it necessarily have to be called in to help. 

 And they may justly and legitimately be called in, and called upon 

 to contribute their share towards the work, even in money, because 

 the result will not be personal benefit only to those being educated, 

 but a public benefit to all those who expect to be fed by agriculture, 

 and indeed to the whole nation. 



That is the criterion by which the legitimacy of public assistance 

 given to what may appear as class objects has to be judged. 



We have an unconscionable number of appeals made to the 

 " State " to assist farmers, and many other classes, too — each 

 class of course pleading eloquently for itself — out of taxpayers' 

 purses. In relation to the present point it is asked in order that 

 there may be, at the cost of the consumers — whose interest it 

 obviously is to have as cheap food as is possible — artificially 

 created dear food. In India we are by design, and happily not 

 without good results, fighting famine. Abroad we have lately 

 been helping even our declared enemies — by whose inhumanity 

 we have first suffered a great deal — on humane principles to 

 stave off famine and high prices by our gifts. At home we are 

 asked artificially to bring about what is the result of famine. On 

 the other hand, while the taxpayer really is made to subsidise 

 the farmer by contributing willy nilly, under the superior orders of 

 the Government or of Parliament, to the farmer's business — as in 

 supporting him with money for trading purposes, say, in buying 

 and selling — the classes interested in the matter, and likely to be 

 damaged by such preferential treatment — of which there has been 

 plenty — naturally and very reasonably cry out that such proceeding 

 is unfair to themselves, as of course it is. Except in times of war, 

 when certain things must be had, to keep the population alive, no 

 business is worth having, or retaining, which does not maintain 

 itself, bringing by its practice additional strength to the community, 

 instead of weakening it by drafts upon its substance. It is not by 

 any means certain that in the public support given to what is called 

 " organisation " under the Government's recent smiles — as much as 

 £25,000 being made available for " agricultural organisation " that 

 people ought to have provided for themselves — we have not, in spite 

 of our boasted general loyalty to economic principle, been sailing 

 very near the wind. And the intended beneficiaries themselves may 

 find out that, as in Sterne's time, " All is not gain that is got into the 



