THE FALLACIES OF PXONOMIC SCIENCE 200 



The Fact v. the Fallacy 



The truth is— 



1. That we can, under an agricultural system, favourable to 



the entire country, grow all our own wheat. 



2. That while there is no necessity to perpetuate the system 



of pauperising the poor, there is, on the other hand, 



every reason why we shouhl at length adopt a sensible, 



practical system of converting, at least, the deserving 



and capable ones among them, into useful members 



of the community, and give them that stake in the 



country which is their inalienable right, l)ut which 



has, most disastrously, hitherto been denied to them. 



Then one more thing becomes equally obvious, and that is 



the practical impossibility of applying the laws of economic 



science to individual agriculturists. 



Ask the man, for example, who produces his 32 bushels 

 of wheat, and consumes 1(S of them for his daily bread, what he 

 thinks of the political economist who tells him that it is wrong 

 to grow wheat when he can import it a sldlling or two per 

 quarter cheaper, and his reply will be forcible if not polite. 

 What on earth has he to do with the subtleties of political 

 economy or the unfathomable mysteries which enshroud the 

 entire question of economic science ? His business is to live ; 

 he knows he cau live by and out of his land, luit bitter 

 experience taught him that he could not live without it. He 

 knows full well tliat if the State had not given him the oppor- 

 tunity of acquiring his four acres on terms that gave him the 

 only chance he had of pulling himself together, he and his 

 A\ould have been paupers in a State workhouse, or dead of 

 disappointment and want. 



It is just here, however, that your political economist waxes 

 triumphant over the poor agriculturist who, knowing full well 

 tliat he is right in his simple system of practical economics as 

 applied to the everyday re(|uirements of his domestic life, 

 cannot, nevertheless, rebut. the seemingly irresistible logic of 

 the theoretical economist. 



Familiar Fallacies 



" But, my dear man," argues the economist, " how can you 

 say that it pays you to put your surplus fourteen bushels on the 

 market when it is proved by all the laws of economics that 

 wheat can be imported from many foreign countries at least one 

 or two shillings per quarter cheaper than it can be grown in 



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