A BUSINESS PROPOSITION. 55 



protection of inefficiency. This is vaguely recognised, but there 

 is no sufficient assurance to the taxpayer that he is not being 

 charged for incompetence, and it is bound to lead to a reopening 

 of questions which would vitally effect any business policy. 



Take a parallel with commerce. To increase sales, extra 

 commissions and prizes are often given ; but if sales were 

 1,000,000 per annum and the bonus offered were a flat 5 per 

 cent, on all sales, no board of directors would face the risk of 

 50,000 dead loss before one extra sale was secured. If 100,000 

 increase of sales were secured an instant calculation would 

 be made by every member of the board that the extra 100,000 

 of sales has cost 55,000 in additional sales expense. This 

 course is, nevertheless, the one chosen by the Government, 

 and this obvious criticism will be very generally made when 

 peace returns. Some recognition must be made of the ability 

 of certain lands to compete with little or no subsidy, and mar- 

 gin created for a high subsidy on less fertile lands. It is also 

 essential that the Government assistance be asked for only 

 so long as, and to the degree that, the unequal conditions exist. 



As to a guaranteed minimum production in return for the 

 subsidy, there is at present no one to give and enforce the guar- 

 antee because there is no effective general management of the 

 industry, and the obvious remedy is to create one. Unless the 

 farming community is prepared to appoint a body from its own 

 numbers, independent of the State, to make such a proposition, 

 and to guarantee a valuable return to the State, there is only 

 the alternative of State control to secure increased production. 



There is also another unsettled point of primary importance 

 in arriving at what farming is. That is the ideal, variously 

 referred to as the reservoir or nursery of manhood, the back- 

 to-the-land movement, or in its more prosaic form, a large home 

 market for manufactures ; and finally, in its negative form, as 

 rural depopulation. A reservoir of healthy and contented men 

 and women is the phrase used by the Agricultural Policy Sub- 

 Committee, and a more nebulous phrase on which to build a 

 business policy one can hardly conceive. It leaves entirely in 

 doubt whether we are to plan for large units, each equipped 

 with a rounded organisation of accountant, purchasing agent, 

 sales manager and the like ; or whether we are to plan for 

 auxiliary common services for small units. On the basis of 

 pure economics and open competition the larger unit must 

 win, but if the creation of a large body of well-rounded business 

 men is the ideal then again the industry must approach the 

 State, name a price, justify its basis and guarantee a result. 

 I am inclined to think that English sentiment tends towards 

 the small unit with common services, and that any specific 

 measures of business policy must be adapted to that end. But 



