48 THE AGRICULTURAL CLUB. 



for wheat-growing. In my opinion the real object of our wheat 

 policy should be to make the most of home-grown supplies 

 as a counter-agent for checking speculation in foreign markets. 



Mr. R. V. Lennard, in a well-considered paper on " Agri- 

 cultural Development and National Welfare," read in 

 October, 1918, made the following general observations on 

 the economic aspects of agricultural policy : 



Agriculture, like every other form of economic activity, 

 aims, or should aim, primarily, at obtaining the largest possible 

 return in useful commodities for the smallest possible expendi- 

 ture of energy. This is not the same thing as saying that the 

 object of agriculture is the maximum of profit, for profit may 

 mean simply profit for the employer, and the maximum of profit 

 in this sense may be obtained at the expense of persons other 

 than the employer and may be the result of low wages or low 

 rents or high prices. To put it vulgarly and roughly, a sound 

 economic policy means getting the largest quantity of food 

 with the least sweat. That this is, from the economic point 

 of view, sound policy has been determined by the common sense 

 of mankind, and though the applications of the principle are 

 frequently misunderstood, its fundamental truth is implicitly 

 admitted by everybody. For if you reject the principle, you 

 are immediately involved in absurdity. If, for example, it is 

 urged that industries should aim, not at the maximum return 

 for the labour and capital invested on them, but at providing 

 work for the largest number of persons, all technical improvements 

 and inventions must be condemned, for these improvements 

 and inventions are all devices for obtaining a larger return with 

 less work. The point is so obvious that it need not be laboured. 

 The man who denies the truth of the principle ought logically 

 to advocate a law forbidding the use of labour-saving machinery 

 and favour a policy of cultivating wild and desolate moorlands 

 instead of good farming land. But though the validity of the 

 general principle is obvious, its implications are often overlooked. 

 It is frequently assumed that the wisdom or unwisdom of a 

 particular agricultural policy can be determined by purely 

 agricultural considerations. Many people, while they would 

 admit the folly of growing tomatoes on Ben Nevis, are sufficiently 

 inconsistent to believe that, once it is proved that the land 

 will yield more than it does, it follows as a matter of course 

 that it ought to be more intensively cultivated than it is, and 

 even that it would be sound economic policy to grow the largest 

 possible crops irrespective of the outlay such a policy would 

 require. Nor are opinions of this type confined to the more 



