AGRICULTURAL COMMITTEES 101 



what farmers feel they still can do, if they 

 choose, in spite of the existence of Agricultural 

 Committees. 



To put into practice any kind of agricultural 

 policy it is quite obvious you must have 

 agriculturists working the machinery. How- 

 ever much they may dislike Cultivation Orders 

 imposed upon them, we must have some farmers 

 to direct the administrative machine ; but the 

 initial error which the Government made was 

 to set up County Agricultural Committees, the 

 majority on which are elected by the County 

 Councils who may possibly not contain a single 

 agriculturist, and of appointing the remaining 

 third chiefly from a class requiring supervision 

 as to the management of their own farms. As 

 a class farmers are incorrigible law-breakers. 

 During the War it was impossible to impose 

 upon them, or to expect them to abide by, any 

 kind of ration scheme with regard to meat, 

 milk, butter, or even bread. To live in a 

 farmhouse meant, comparatively speaking, to 

 live well ; and since the fixing of statutory 

 minimum wages for farm workers every County 

 Court and bench of Magistrates has had to 

 try innumerable cases of non-payment of the 

 legal wage, to say nothing of the greater 

 number of offences in this respect which have 

 never come into Court, but which have been 

 settled between farmers and the officials of the 

 farm workers' unions. 



