FARMING BY COLLECTIVE EFFORT 161 



officials who, unfortunately, had to be kept by 

 the taxpayers. Such officials should not be 

 necessary in a well-organised State, for they 

 are non-producers. Farmers appear to have 

 a particular tenderness for officials if they are 

 privately employed, judging by the number of 

 men with something to sell, who swarm into 

 every town and village, overlapping one another 

 like a football scrimmage. Travellers, manu- 

 facturers' agents, brokers, wholesale and retail 

 salesmen, they and their motor-cars are all 

 welcomed with open arms by farmers, and 

 sustained in affluence by the farming com- 

 munity. Well might Sir Leo Chiozza Money 

 say in his book, The Triumph of Nationalisa- 

 tion : "If all the State offices (in war-time) 

 had been ranged in two straight lines" they 

 would have formed one fairly large street. A 

 much larger street would be formed by putting 

 together the offices of a single commercial 

 business, that of insurance — a business which 

 would be obsolete in a properly organised 

 society. This illustration may help some 

 critics of nationalisation to that useful gift — 

 a sense of proportion." 



I wonder how many of us who ate our daily 

 bread in 191 7 realised that "officials" had 

 bought ^19,216,000 worth of wheat in that 

 year from the available world's supplies, at the 

 nominal cost of ,£18,000 for salaries and 

 establishment charges ; or how many of us 

 11 



