44 QUESTIONS OF PRINCIPLE 



sent a few deals to satisfy an infinitesimal demand. The 

 same is true of straw, and, in a slightly less degree, of hay 

 in normal times. . 



Even if the difficulty of fixing the market prices of certain 

 products, such as turnips, or even hay, be ignored, and 

 if it be assumed that there be a free market in such things, 

 a fuller consideration of what the farmer really does in 

 feeding them to his stock will show how inapplicable such 

 values are to his case. The market value of an article is 

 the figure at which a willing buyer and a willing seller can 

 agree to do business. The farmer who contends that he is 

 justified in ' selling ' his roots or hay to his stock is selling 

 them, in point of fact, to himself, and seeing that there is 

 only one party to the transaction there can be no market, 

 and consequently no market price. In the majority of cases 

 each of these things is grown because the farmer has need 

 of them in the production of the article or articles of food 

 towards which his management is directed. If he could buy 

 them more cheaply than he can grow them he would surely 

 do so, but to regard himself as a merchant instead of as 

 a manufacturer, and then to trade with one department of 

 his farm against another is to involve himself in paper 

 transactions which have no foundation in fact, and which 

 may lead to disastrous conclusions. Some years ago 

 a well-known firm of manure manufacturers found them- 

 selves handicapped in the production of superphosphate by 

 the high price of sulphuric acid. To meet this they decided 

 to put down a sulphuric acid plant, and found that the cost 

 of their ' super ' was immediately reduced. Had they 

 followed the principle of valuing the acid at its market 

 value their superphosphate would still have appeared to 

 be an unproductive line, and the only conclusion to be drawn 

 from their books would have been that they should give 

 up manure manufacturing and concentrate their efforts 

 on the. production of acid, for which, probably, they would 

 have had no sale. The same argument holds good in the case, 

 so often quoted, of the price of hay and the cost of milk. 

 It may well be that in consequence of a temporary or of 



