12 THE ERRORS OF THE PAST 



And yet we should not place upon economists 

 all the blame. At a time when great and wonderful 

 discoveries were being made, when new machines 

 of marvellous power were being invented, when 

 the industrial development of the country was 

 phenomenal, it was not surprising that political 

 economists, blinded by the glamour of this great 

 industrial development, should proclaim that " Great 

 is our Industry." 



Deluding themselves that in our urban industries 

 alone lay the source of all increase in national 

 wealth, they lost entire sight of the fact that Agri- 

 culture is the primary, and must therefore always 

 be the fundamental, industry of every country ; 

 that the more the land can produce the greater 

 will be the home exchange between urban and 

 rural products ; and that the corner-stone of national 

 welfare is the determination to ensure that the 

 exchange within the country itself of urban and 

 rural commodities shall be as high as possible. 



In the early days of political economy the 

 attitude towards land was much sounder than it 

 is to-day. Adam Smith, for instance, fully realised 

 the value and the importance of land to the nation, 

 and ever insisted upon the fact that the soundest 

 source from which increase in national wealth 

 could come was the land. 



But, unfortunately, succeeding schools of econo- 

 mists got further and further away from this 

 truth, and the final result has been that as a 

 great national asset land has been neglected. All 

 attention was concentrated on developing urban 

 industries ; in consequence many of our urban 



