62 



admit that the State may wisely tax itself to maintain and strengthen 

 the agricultural community if only as a measure of national assurance. 



" To Protection, a purely negative policy, the alternatives are 

 constructive schemes that will aid the farmer to extend his in- 

 dustry in novel directions, schemes that will remove the difficulties 

 standing in the way of success in 'his ordinary business, that will 

 provide him with information and advice and thus minimise the 

 disadvantages which the farmer suffers in the world's market through 

 his business. Such. a policy has the greet advantage over Protec- 

 tion of helping the most capable and active-minded among the 

 farmers, it offers assistance to the men who will improve their 

 methods, and thus advances agriculture as a whole instead of al- 

 lowing the weaker members to set the pace. 



" It is not a new policy, because it has been adopted in combi- 

 nation with Protection by most foreign countries and particularly 

 by our Colonies* In Europe, Hungary provides perhaps the most 

 advanced instance of such nursing of agriculture by the State; 

 Ireland, too, has achieved some good work in that direction, but 

 we must go to the United States, to Canada, or the Transvaal if 

 we wish to see the system at its best. " 



" As regards agriculture we need only reflect that within the 

 last hundred years, a period contemporaneous with the growth of 

 any science of agriculture, the production of wheat per acre in 

 this country has been practically doubled. The causes have not 

 been improved cultivation, because the older methods, if costly in 

 labour, were very effectual, nor has the kind of wheat grown brought 

 about the difference, because many varieties more than a hundred 

 years old are still grown to-day and yield well up to the average; 

 the chief factor of change has been the introduction and general 

 use of i mported fertilisers which have brought about a general rise 

 in the productivity of the soil. Agriculturists are apt to forget 

 that the first step in these matters, the step that counts, was ori- 

 ginally due to science ; the use of fertilisers has now been absorbed 

 into the stream of tradition, every farmer knows the value of su- 

 perphosphate, but he " specs it growed, " without any reference to 

 the work of Lawes and Liebig in inventing it. 



" To-day, when the great discoveries of the prime fertilisers are 

 over, the work of the man of science in that connection consists 

 rather in examining the new sources and in following out the se- 

 condary actions of the manure upon the soil and upon the quality 

 of the crop. But in other directions almost virgin fields of work 



