The Organisation of the Industry. 27 



found themselves compelled to cultivate their land, and 

 to improve their methods. Those who were short of 

 capital found that difficulty disappearing-, and the farmers 

 began to amass surplus profits which an indulgent govern- 

 ment refrained from taxing. Such a time of general 

 prosperity amongst farmers had not been known within 

 the memory of men engaged in the industry. It might 

 have been expected that confidence in the industry would 

 have grown, but farmers are born pessimists, and as prices 

 and profits rose, they kept their eyes firmly fixed on rising 

 costs and wages, and looked forward with doleful fore- 

 boding to the ruin they were sure would overtake them 

 very soon. So little confidence had they in their industry 

 that they refused to carry on unless the Government 

 guaranteed them against loss in growing wheat and oats. 

 That demand I shall discuss later. I refer to it here, 

 because I think it will be obvious that those men who 

 failed to respond to the improving conditions in the 

 industry in the stable years before the war are not at all 

 likely to show any enterprise in the unstable and trouble- 

 some years ahead. The less efficient a farmer is, the more 

 pessimistic is he likely to be, and I see nothing in the 

 changed conditions brought about by the war that would 

 lead us to hope that the low level of farming general before 

 the war will disappear in the years ahead unless some direct 

 method of dealing with the inefficients is devised. 



The Farm Worker. 



The agricultural worker cannot complain that he has 

 been neglected in recent years. A whole library has grown 

 up around him. He has been investigated by commis- 



