The Consumers' Interest. 93 



maintaining the agricultural industry in this country at 

 the expense of the consumer, we should be justified in 

 giving the farmers a protected market. Unless, however, 

 it can be shown that the agricultural industry is making 

 the fullest use of its opportunities, and conducting its 

 operations on the most efficient lines, no good case can be 

 made out for protection. I have tried to show that the 

 industry generally is not being as efficiently conducted as 

 it could be, and that it has not reached the limit of what 

 is possible even under a system of profit-making 

 capitalism. The effect of protection would not be to 

 induce greater enterprise and efficiency, but would tend 

 rather to ensure easier profits to the inefficient. In itself 

 it would do nothing to increase production on economic 

 lines. It would inevitably lead the industry to concentrate 

 on efforts to secure higher protection, and to look for 

 increased profits from better prices rather than from 

 improved methods. From the point of view of the com- 

 munity it is questionable if protection would give the 

 desired increase in production, or secure the maintenance 

 of a larger rural population. The cost to the nation would 

 be a heavy one and no method has been devised of pre- 

 venting a system of protection from enriching the land- 

 ow^ners and capitalists at the expense of the general 

 community. The agricultural workers in particular have 

 no reason to believe that any benefit which they might 

 conceivably secure, as workers, from an industry which 

 employers might conduct more profitably under a protective 

 system would compensate them for the higher cost of 

 living such a system would necessarily entail. 



I am convinced that the industry will develop more 



