PAUPERISM AS A RESULT OF FREE TRADE 99 



How are we to have our manufacturing industries 

 unless we build our factories and put " hands " into 

 them? And how are we to increase our existing indus- 

 tries and trades unless we send to them the necessary 

 complement of labour? 



To predict difficulties in agriculture because we supply 

 that industry with one of the essentials to success — 

 labour — is, ceteris paribus, to prophesy evil to our manu- 

 facturing industries, because we supply them with the 

 necessary workers. Mr Balfour cannot blow hot and cold 

 with the same breath, and what is sauce for the goose 

 is sauce for the gander. Agriculture, like every other 

 industry in this world, must take its chance, and bear its 

 ups and downs like everything else in life. What we have 

 to do is to start it on its way, give it every chance of 

 success, and then let it run alone. Mr Balfour and his 

 Party need have no misgivings on this point, because it 

 is clearly shown elsewhere in these pages that agricul- 

 ture is not only capable of drawing off all those who are 

 unemployed to-day, but millions of the population of 

 this country besides. 



There is, however, a note in Mr Balfour's utterance 

 that is far more alarming than his ill-grounded predic- 

 tions about difficulties arising through sending the 

 people " back to the land," and that is the baneful effect 

 of his own policy when he and his Party are again in 

 power. 



If Mr Balfour, in opposition, sees danger in developing 

 agriculture, what course is Mr Balfour, as Prime Minis- 

 ter, likely to take? If Mr Balfour, as Leader of the Oppo- 

 sition, denounces " back to the land " as a harmful 



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