322 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 



tenant farmers for three Sessions longer that statutory- 

 protection for the money they invest in their holdings, which 

 their ablest representatives have unanimously asked for, and 

 which men of impartial and sound judgment and of 

 adequate experience have professed a readiness to give 

 them. 



As to the Report itself, it arranges with skill and effect 

 many of the most important points brought out in evidence, 

 it contains much precise and useful information, and many- 

 suggestions and recommendations with which I heartily 

 concur. 



The statistical tables and summing up of evidence in the 

 chapters on the "Fall in Prices" and "Foreign Competi- 

 tion " are carefully prepared and well digested, and will be 

 found of great value. 



I also wish to express my cordial assent to several of the 

 chapters in Part III, especially the well-considered chapters 

 on the " Sale of Mortgaged Land," and on " Agricultural 

 Education." 



But having said thus much, I am, to my regret, bound to 

 state that I find the report defective in method, inadequate 

 as a presentment of the facts laid before us, one-sided in its 

 handling of essential issues, and misleading in several of its 

 conclusions. 



Agricultural depression, with its causes and their possible 

 remedies, is from beginning to end an economic question. 

 The subject can only be adequately handled from an 

 economic standpoint, and by a logical and complete examina- 

 tion of the whole of the facts. 



But, in the Majority Report, there is no consecutive and 

 comprehensive analysis and attempt to classify, and approxi- 

 mately estimate, in their economic relations to each other, 

 the whole of the causes contributing to the state of things 

 that we wish to see bettered. 



Thus, while the fall of prices and foreign competition are 

 exhaustively dealt with, and the permanence or increase in 

 certain items of the cost of production are recognised, the 

 obvious inference that the margin left for rent must dwindle 

 when prices have fallen, and the ratio of the cost of labour 

 and other outgoings to the gross receipts from the land has 

 risen, and that, therefore, high rents in bad times rapidly be- 

 come a more and more intensely operative cause of acute 

 depression, is left undrawn and unstated. 



