210 BRITAIN Foil THE BRITON 



England ? " Then follow the stock arguments with which the 

 world is so familiar. 



^Meanwhile our unfortunate agriculturist has been so 

 badgered by his antagonists and pounded by the numerous 

 batteries which " scientists " have erected against agriculture, 

 that he has become i^uite confused. " I can't answer all your 

 arguments in a single Yes or No," says he, " because it seems 

 to me that such an answer would not meet the case. I know, 

 however, that I do grow an acre of wheat each year out of my 

 four acres holding, and that I consume part of it for my own 

 bread and put the other part on the market. Taking one thing 

 with another, I find my little agricultural venture pays me, 

 and this is wliat chiefly concerns me. If I lose a shilling or so 

 on my wheat, I certainly make up for it on the other things I 

 grow and sell ; if this were not so I could not carry on my farm 

 from year to year." 



Such a reply as this has been given by many agriculturists 

 during the last fifty years or so ; and when we come to think of 

 it, it is, after all, the only practical reply that can or should be 

 given to a really practical question. If a man's business pays 

 him, well — it pays him, and that is his chief concern. 



To your " scientific " economist, however, this eminently 

 practical reply is so utterly opposed to all the canons of 

 economics as to evoke profound pity and contempt for the 

 foggy perversity of the bucolic mind, and there the matter 

 ends as between the practical agriculturist and the theoretical 

 scientist. 



Economic Science Tested by its own Fallacies 



Let us, however, draw a parallel between agriculture and 

 the manufacturing industries, as a further illustration. 



It is not for a moment supposed, except by the unin- 

 itiated, that every line of goods that a manufacturer makes is 

 exceedingly profitable, or — equally profitable. 



Questioned on the point, he will frankly tell you that this 

 particular line is more profitable than that ; that some goods 

 hardly pay to make, and that, in one or two instances, he is, 

 owing to excessive local competition, cheap imitations, or other 

 causes, really working at no profit, or even at a slight loss. 

 Asked why he does not give up producing goods that do not 

 pay and he will tell you that the nature of his business would 

 not admit of his doing so, many of his customers being buyers 

 of at least half a dozen of the lines of goods he is in the habit 

 of making, and that, taking one thing with another, it pays 

 him to go on manufacturing the more or less unprofitable lines. 



