MINUTES OF EVIDENCE. 



31 



U October, 1919.] 



MR. JAMES GAKDNEK. 



[Continued. 



not to have occurred. There was faulty organisation 

 on the part of a certain proportion of the farmers 

 in getting the best use of their labour? Pre-war? 



13.410. Pre-war; and during the war the pressure 

 did speed them up to make better use of their labour!' 

 I should not agree to the statement that the 

 Scottish farmers were not getting the best out of 

 their labour pre-war. 



13.411. I am not suggesting that they were speeding 

 up their men in a wrong way. As a matter of fact, 

 I think you would agree that it is very often the 

 worst organiser of labour who gets least out of his 

 men and works them in a fashion that produces most 

 friction ? Undoubtedly. 



13.412. And that there is a possibility, even without 

 increasing the labour supply, of getting more output 

 by better organisation of the labour supply:' Un- 

 doubtedly. 



13.413. Just a question now about the Wages Com- 

 mittee. You have had experience both of the Statu- 

 tory Wages Committee and of the voluntary method 

 that we had in operation before the Corn Production 

 Act was passed. From your experience as an em- 

 ployer and as Chairman of the Committee, do you 

 think that the method of the Wages Committee with 

 a statutory minimum rate in Scotland has been of 

 any advantage to the industry or to the workmen ? 

 None at all, so far. 



13.414. If I put it that the cost for a year of these 

 Committees works out to about 6,000, do you think 

 that is a justifiable expenditure of public money? 

 It might come to be of use in future when wages are 

 falling and there is a plentiful supply of labour. 



13.415. I put it to you, taking your own district, 

 the minimum rate fixed was probably about 12s. a 

 week below the market rate at the present time. 

 Do you think there is much defence in a system 

 which guarantees a workman 12s. lees than he can 

 get in the open market: 1 I am bound to say that up 

 till now the workmen on the Minimum Wages Com- 

 mittee have not taken very much interest in it, or 

 been very much alarmed by any decision it might 

 come to. They have been very well aware that the 

 wages they could get were above the minimum wage, 

 and they did not bother their heads much about it. 



13.416. And that, so far as the workmen in Scotland 

 are concerned, they are quite prepared to stand on 

 their own feet without any guarantee from the 

 State ao far as their conditions are concerned? 

 Absolutely. 



13.417. Mr. EtlucarJi: I am exceedingly interested 

 in your evidence, but I am not quite sure that my 

 mind is running in the same direction as yours with 

 regard to guaranteed prices, and I have been sitting 

 here throughout the Commission. I do not find that 

 you in your precis or in your programme on this 

 paper put very great weight on guaranteed prices. 

 You say here: " In the event of the Government 

 adopting a policy of import duties on manufactured 

 articles and free imports of foodstuffs, there should 

 be a guarantee by the State of prices." That is, 

 you seem to suggest in your programme that the 

 guarantee is a condition upon protection being 

 adopted in the country? That is so. 



13.418. In the event of protection of other indus- 

 tries not being adopted, do you still adhere to the 

 policy of guaranteed prices? I still maintain that if 

 the community desires arable farming, the guarantee 

 is one effective method for preventing arable land 

 from going back to grass*. 



13.419. Do you think that the guarantee of itself 

 will be sufficient to prevent the land getting into 

 grass?- It would have that effect. Much of it would 

 go into grass. The poorer land would go down to 

 grass, as probably it may deserve to go, in the mean- 

 time. A great deal of land that would go down to 

 grass would bo kept under the plough. 



13.420. Yes ; but you yourself said that the kind of 

 guarantee you would require would be one below 

 the cost of production? Yes. 



13.421. And yet you see at the present moment we 

 have maximum prices much above that, and still you 



have land in Scotland, and it is the same in Wales, 

 where I come from, going back to grass. How do you 

 think that a guarantee below the cost of production 

 will prevent the land going to grass when we find 

 the maximum prices at present prevailing failing 

 to keep the land from going back to grass? It might 

 help some of the better class of land is my answer. 

 It may be that the land giving the smallest return 

 will go back to grass. 



13.422. You said yourself just now that the best 

 land would be cultivated in any case? In any case. 



13.423. Then what effect would the guarantee have? 

 On that land it would not have any effect, but it 

 would have an effect on the secondary land. 



13.424. If the guarantee will fail to keep the poor 

 land and if the good land in cultivation will be culti- 

 vated in any case, it is simply the medium land 

 from which you expect to find any results at all? 

 There is a tremendous lot of that land. 



13.425. You speak continuously about the com- 

 munity and the Government. Do you think it is wise 

 from a farmer's point of view with the present temper 

 of the community, for the farmers to approach the 

 State and say : ' ' We will not carry on our business 

 unless we get a guarantee"? But we do not say 

 that at all. 



13.426. But you admit yourself that the farmers 

 are doing well ; and we must admit that at the 

 present moment the rents are rising, and you admit 

 yourself that the guarantee will tend to raise rents? 

 Yes. 



13.427. In view of those facts, do you really think 

 the community will be convinced that the policy of 

 guaranteed prices is a sound one for the nation? 

 I do not see any unsoundness about it. 



13.428. You spoke also with regard to the stagnant 

 state of agriculture in this country due to the condi- 

 tions. I should like to have a full explanation of the 

 conditions you refer to which are the cause of the 

 stagnation of the agricultural industry in this 

 country, as compared with the prosperity of agri- 

 culture in other countries which you mentioned? 

 First of all, you have your tremendous influx of 

 foreign grown cereals, and the cheap freight was 

 part of the cause of that. Then you had your system 

 of tenure, which is not good, and then you had the 

 lack of any interest in agriculture as shown by the 

 whole of the community, and it was allowed gradually 

 to peter out and gradually become derelict. One 

 of these causes, the flooding of the country with 

 foreign merchandise, was quite sufficient to do the 

 whole thing of itself without any of the other con- 

 ditions; but if you had these different reforms which 

 are proposed in my precis working, you would have 

 several factors all tending towards the resuscitating 

 of agriculture. I say the guarantee without those 

 other things would be purely an ineffective remedy, 

 but along with the others it would be an effective 

 one. 



13.429. So you think the guarantee by itself is not 

 sufficient in order to develop the industry on proper 

 lines in the future? By no means. It would prac- 

 tically be of no use whatever without other matters. 

 It is only one of several means. 



13.430. You spoke just now about occupying owners 

 and the effect of the guaranteed price and so forth 

 on them. Are you aware, in regard to that point, 

 that we in this country are in a peculiar position as 

 compared with any other country in the world? 

 am aware that the occupying ownership in Great 

 Britain is about 12 per cent, as against 88 per cent., 

 say, of tenant farmers, and the other way about with 

 regard to some Continental countries. I am aware of 

 that fact from Professor Middleton's account of Ger- 

 man agriculture, as we all are. 



13.431. And you appreciate that such protection to 

 agriculture as the guarantee of prices and so forth 

 will have an entirely different effect under our con- 

 ditions as compared 'with what they were getting in 

 Germany under their conditions? An entirely dif- 

 ferent effect. 



13.432. I mean on the man operating the land? 



