112 A NEW AGRICULTURAL POLICY 



selves. The Government cannot do it ; cer- 

 tainly the Ministry of Agriculture cannot do 



it." 



And yet Lord Lee expects a Committee 

 largely representative of a class that is letting 

 the land down to grass, to prevent this process 

 of deterioration in agriculture and the increase 

 of unemployment ! 



While the workers themselves do not control 

 the means of production, in spite of an Agri- 

 cultural Wages Board, they cannot ensure 

 employment, and farmers have the whip hand 

 of them, as they frankly pointed out in the 

 manifesto I quoted, issued by their Union. 

 The only real remedy for unemployment, and 

 for the under-cultivation of the land, is to make 

 the farm labourers themselves copartners in 

 their own industry, and the initial step in this 

 direction is to give them proportionate repre- 

 sentation on County Agricultural Committees. 

 The most acute critics of bad farming are not to 

 be found within the superb masonry which graces 

 Whitehall, but inside the tap-room of the Pig 

 and Whistle, or the village institute where the 

 trade union branch meets. 



Many of these men are unknown beyond the 

 adjoining parishes. Their names never appear 

 in the printed sheet. They never step out into 

 the limelight. Their lives are spent in lonely 

 watches, on the slopes of the Downs with their 

 dog and sheep as companions, or in tending 



