THREAT OF COMPULSION 49 



The farmer need not be alarmed. Good wages create 

 good labour. The higher agricultural wages of the 

 northern counties are to-day justified by the efficiency 

 of the labour. 



The language of the Minority makes it plain that in 

 their belief if the redemption of British agriculture is 

 not accomplished by some such means as they propose, 

 intervention by the State on a far larger scale lies 

 beyond. The implied warning should be enough. No 

 farmer wants the Draconian laws of Louis XIV under 

 which in Canada men were imprisoned for not cutting 

 their thistles in July. 



Other recommendations, all of considerable import- 

 ance, are made in the Minority Report, but these should 

 be studied in their proper place. The purpose of the 

 foregoing reflections has been not to follow the Report 

 in detail, or tires omely to cover the same ground, but 

 to support and comment upon its principal theme. 



XII 



AN ILLUSTRATION 



While the war spirit is upon us we may get things 

 done which would be stopped dead by the rancour or 

 flippancy of partisanship in times of peace. An 

 excellent instance is the Summer Time Act. The 

 supporters of this measure had almost given up hope, 

 when the war rescued it, and it was rapidly passed as 

 an economical device — ^as " emergency " legislation. 

 It had been so easy in time of peace to say that the 

 scheme was controversial ; that the whole thing was 



