BOUNTIES ON EXTENSION OF ARABLE in 



limits the commitments of the State each year ; it would 

 represent a payment for services rendered, and it would 

 not give any unearned assistance to the farmer who finds 

 his arable land remunerative at the pre-war scale of 

 prices. Again, it would leave the farmer free to grow 

 whatever arable crops were most useful to his business ; 

 the dairy farmer, for example, would be encouraged to 

 feed his cows upon cultivated land and not depend upon 

 cheap grass. If the nation obtained the extra arable land, 

 though normally it would be employed in producing the 

 more remunerative milk and meat, in time of war it could 

 be at once sown with wheat. A sliding scale of pay- 

 ments would further get over the objection that attaches 

 to paying any bounty when prices rise to such an 

 extent as to render the arable farming profitable with- 

 out any assistance. It would be an insurance against 

 the occurrence of conditions that drive the farmer back 

 to cheap grass land farming, and would give him the 

 security he needs before embarking upon new methods 

 of cultivation. 



The fundamental objection to bounties or duties 

 alike is that some of the State's expenditure goes 

 into the pockets of men who have done nothing to 

 earn it. Consider in the one case the man who can 

 make wheat-growing pay at present prices (or rather 

 at the price prevailing before the war), and has in con- 

 sequence as large an acreage of arable land and perhaps 

 of wheat itself as his land will stand. A bounty will 

 be so much pure gain to him ; the State may have to 

 pay him a considerable sum in any one year for which 

 it does not get a single extra quarter of wheat. Pre- 

 sumably the extra profit would soon be swallowed up 

 by a corresponding increase of rent ; but whether the 



