382 BKITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



thrusts this Evil on the country — exposes the monstrous fallacy 

 of encouraging the foreigner to grow our corn, and other food- 

 stuffs, when our own lands are lying untilled and our people 

 unemployed. 



Every sane man who wishes well to his country knows that 

 we can grow practically all our own food and, by a wise system 

 of Tariff-reform and Land-reform, employ our own people and 

 stop that enervating drain of excessive emigration which has 

 robbed tlie country of its virile strength during the last half- 

 century. He knows that the sacrifice of agriculture involves 

 the sacrifice of those numerous subsidiary industries wliich 

 grow out of, and depend upon, the parent industry, and that 

 the loss of both one and the other must inevitably result in 

 widespread unemployment and poverty. It is also clear that 

 the destruction of these great industries carries with it the loss 

 of that immense purchasing power possessed by a numerous 

 universal agricultural population in the plenitude of its 

 prosperity. It is, moreover, manifest that as all agricul- 

 tural produce, whether grown in foreign countries or on our 

 own soil, must, by the operation of an economic law, be paid 

 for Ml other commodities, our own agriculturists would necessarily 

 be better customers of British manufacturers than are the 

 farmers of the United States or other countries from which 

 we now draw 75 per cent, of our food supplies. This is easily 

 proved by the fact that our Imports exceed our Exports by 

 £172,000,000,* which means that foreign growers, who supply 

 us Avith £172,000,000 worth of agricultural produce every year, 

 huij short in British manufactures. 



There is, in fact, nothing but loss in every direction, loss 

 that radiates from the neglected Land industry and ramifies 

 among every section of the people. It directly, or indirectly, 

 affects every form of occupation, and runs along the social and 

 economic lines of the country so that no individual, and no 

 trade, profession, or industry, escapes its blighting touch. There 

 is no single industry or group of industries that exercise over 

 the affairs of a people the same far-reaching effect as the single 

 industry of Agi!ICULTU1;e, and once it be interfered with, and 

 its beneficence checked or cut off, no man is able to estimate 

 the extent of the evil that must inevitably result. 



Those who destroyed agriculture and prevented the people 

 growing their own food supplies imposed penalties upon the 

 country which no nation can bear with impunity, and they 

 alone are responsible for the Evil that has overtaken the British 

 people. 



* " statistical Abstract for the United Kingdom," CD. 4258 : 1908. 



