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EDUCATION 219 



still exists in an Indian village, the inhabitants of which 

 are more at the mercy of the money-lender and grain dealer 

 than we would wish our smallholders to be. Nevertheless, 

 the enormous strides which have been made in modern 

 co-operation in India, and elsewhere, lead one to hope that 

 much may be achieved in this direction. In considering 

 the labour of the country, we must also consider the town 

 labourer. At present, of our total consumption of wheat, 

 only 19 per cent, is home grown, as against 75 per cent, of 

 oats. Yet we each eat twice as much wheat as oats. In a 

 similar way, we produce practically all the potatoes we eat, 

 as against only 19 per cent, of the wheat we eat, yet our 

 consumption per head of wheat is greater than that of 

 potatoes. Are the town workers willing to change their 

 diet so as to make the consumption more nearly fit the 

 production ? We ought to consume more home-grown 

 food and less foreign-grown food. The town workers may 

 have to learn to eat less wheat but more barley, bats, and 

 potatoes. Undoubtedly the chief reason why our consump- 

 tion of wheat is so high is because wheat lends itself to the 

 production of bread, which can be purchased ready cooked, 

 whilst barley, oats, and potatoes all need some treatment at 

 home before they can be rendered fit for consumption. 

 Germany has, to some extent, solved the problem, by 

 producing large quantities of dried potato flour. As it 

 happens, dried potato flour is more suited for mixing with 

 wheat than either barley or oats for the production of bread, 

 because potato starch gelatinizes at a temperature below 

 that of wheat starch, whilst barley and oats require higher 

 temperatures for cooking. 



Labour must, however, be considered in relationship to 

 other factors determining plant production. The trouble in 

 Great Britain is that the supply of land has been in excess 

 of the land we were willing to cultivate, and that the labour 

 that the farmer could afford to pay for has been insufficient 

 for that cultivation. The ratio of laboiu: to land must be 

 increased to obtain an increased plant production, and, 

 since the land in the^British Isles is almost a fixed quantity, 



