A GUARANTEED PRICE OF WHEAT 109 



fixed standard. This procedure would get over all 

 difficulties caused by varying quality in the farmer's 

 output ; he would still try to make the best price he 

 could and get all advantages of growing seed corn and 

 the like, while the farmer who turned out his wheat 

 in bad condition would suffer the loss consequent on 

 its realizing less than the average price for the year. 

 It would probably be sufficient to confine the bounty 

 to wheat. In the first place it is the production of wheat 

 we most desire to stimulate. Wheat cannot occupy the 

 whole of the arable land, and a bounty on wheat would 

 act as a general bounty on arable farming. If, however, 

 standard prices were similarly fixed for oats and barley, 

 arable farmers would be assisted in all districts, for the 

 growth of one or other cereal forms part of every system 

 of arable farming. Some danger might be apprehended 

 lest farmers should turn their attention entirely to corn- 

 growing and not maintain enough stock to make the 

 farmyard manure required to keep their land in con- 

 dition. But few men would be able to embark upon 

 continuous corn-growing on Mr. Prout's system, because 

 it depends upon a convenient market for straw ; the 

 majority would need to convert their straw into manure, 

 and there is no way of doing that except by cattle. It 

 is possible that there would be less of the intensive 

 cattle feeding that is practised in Norfolk and the other 

 bullock-fattening counties, but it has been for many 

 years an uneconomic process ; if the cattle are managed 

 primarily as producers of manure from straw without 

 trying to enrich it so much by the heavy consumption 

 of cake, there may be less beef for sale but the farm- 

 yard manure that is wanted to keep up the humus in 

 the soil will still be made. 



