6o THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



Expertis crede ! The Canadian farmers know what 

 Protection means to Agriculture. They are recognised as 

 cute men who know their mind. Are we indeed going to 

 be bhnd to the teaching of their experience ? 



" Progress in Agriculture," so writes Mr. Prothero," may 

 be summed up in increasing the yield and lowering the 

 cost of production." Now what can Protection do towards 

 achieving either of these ends ? 



And the same high authority writes : 



" It is not easy to decide whether consumers gained most by 

 the laws which kept corn in the country, or lost most by those 

 which kept it out. In the twentieth century, when there is a 

 large addition or alternative supply of grain, produced under 

 different climatic conditions to our own, there could be no ques- 

 tion that the loss inflicted by the prohibition of imports would be 

 incomparably the greatest." 



It is urged on behalf of Protection that it will enable us 

 to make ourselves independent of foreign supplies of corn. 

 Well, let us see what is the prospect of our accomplishing 

 such end. We have examples close at hand. If there is 

 any one country more favoured than others under the 

 aspect of producing breadcorn for itself, that country is 

 France. France has attempted the task. And how has 

 she fared? She has imposed a duty of 7-50 francs per 

 quintal upon wheat. Farmers chucklingly congratulated 

 themselves that they would keep out foreign wheat. But 

 scarcely was the war note sounded from Berlin, that is, 

 on July 31, 1914, but her rulers found it necessary, on the 

 very same day, to suspend all import duties on foodstuffs, 

 opening the gates of the country wide to foreign imports. 

 And within the first five months of the war the country 

 was very happy to find that it had imported 8,397,593 

 quintals of wheat. After that it strained every nerve to 

 get from Manitoba what it could. 



Germany likewise has — since more than twenty years — 

 strenuously tried to make herself economically independent. 

 And now we hear through the complaints that come to us 

 from all parts of that country, and from the charges levelled 

 against us, that we are making war on her women and 



