A NATIONAL POLICY 255 



that case whatever compensation for disturbance the 

 arbitrator thought just, in addition to the remaining value 

 of his improvements. 



If a sound system of valuation, based on the quantities 

 and prices of produce, and the real economic value of the 

 farm, were insisted on, and the adventitious enhance- 

 ments created by reckless competition and by the selfish 

 and impolitic reliance on competition in many cases, 

 were rigidly excluded, there can be little doubt that the 

 essential mischief of the present condition of affairs 

 would be arrested within a reasonable period, and a 

 stimulus given to vigorous and intelligent development 

 of agriculture such as it has never had before. 



This is far more than a mere question of justice to 

 the persons concerned. It is a question of national, and 

 of supreme national interest. Whether you take the 

 view that, so far as we can reasonably look ahead, foreign 

 competition and the development of new areas will keep 

 down prices, and make the struggle from time to time 

 a desperate one for the home producer, or whether you 

 take the view that population is certain to overtake 

 production so rapidly that increased demand will make 

 it profitable again before many years to cultivate all 

 classes of land with the energy and outlay exhibited 

 twenty-five years ago, the one imperative condition for 

 minimising loss, or for attaining the highest degree of 

 prosperity, is to get and keep that true equilibrium in 

 farming economics, which maintains and develops the 

 resources of the working agriculturist directly employed 

 in his work, and prevents the wasting of those resources, 

 and their diversion to other objects. Such a policy 

 alone can secure the highest cultivation of the soil, the 

 maximum production of food, and the widest distribu- 

 tion of employment. Any reasonable or acceptable 

 machinery for such a purpose should be welcomed by 

 the landowner as well as by the tenant farmer. 



