THE POLICY OF GUARANTEED PRICES 67 



Report of the Royal Commission on Agriculture, 

 recommending these guaranteed prices ? They 

 signed, not because they cared two pins about 

 the costing figures presented to them, for which 

 no one had a tittle of respect, but because 

 "guarantees" stood as the declared policy of 

 the Prime Minister, and they saw a prospect 

 now of the bigger carrot of the world's market 

 being held in front of them. Thus guaranteed 

 prices were inserted in the Bill with compensa- 

 tion for the disturbance of good tenants, together 

 with the assurance of the world's market prices 

 for all corn grown in 192 1. Furthermore, and 

 this is a point I want my readers to note, 

 farmers knew that if they behaved themselves 

 with that political subservience which our 

 country's dictators have exacted from their 

 supporters, they would no longer feel the crack 

 of D.O.R.A.'s whip across their bent shoulders. 



Since 19 19, our wheat area in England and 

 Wales alone has diminished by 347,561 acres, 

 the yield by 1,300,000 qrs. — the smallest yield 

 per acre since 1904 — and since 19 18 the yield 

 has dropped by 3,853,000 qrs. 



It has been proclaimed from many a barn 

 roof that the diminution was due to the pressure 

 of high wages. Now the wages of farm 

 labourers in Great Britain have never had 

 any relation to the price of corn ; neither in the 

 Golden Era of the Sixties, when wages were 

 very low, nor in the depression of the Eighties 



