90 THE MINORITY REPORT 



We agree with the Majority (para. 145) that large 

 numbers of the men discharged from the Services 

 will desire an open-air life whether at home or abroad. 



Paragraph 145 of the Majority Report is as follows : 



"145. We are accordingly forced to the conclusion that 

 unless the fourth course we have mentioned is to be adopted 

 [viz. to put more land down to grass], thereby reducing still 

 further the agricultural production and the agricultural 

 population of England and Wales, it will be essential to 

 provide agriculture with a considerable number of ex-Service 

 men who were not employed in farm work on the outbreak 

 of war. We consider that the demobilisation of our Forces 

 will afford an exceptional opportunity for providing a new 

 supply of agricultural labour. Excluding the munition 

 workers, there will be about three million men discharged or 

 awaiting discharge, who will not have been in agricultural 

 occupations before the war. It seems probable that many of 

 these men after months spent in the open air will prefer not 

 to return to the confinement of the ofl&ce, shop, or factory, 

 provided they can earn a livelihood on the land under favour- 

 able conditions. Some of them will come to this decision as 

 soon as the war is over. Others may return to their former 

 occupations and soon find the confinement of their life irk- 

 some. According to our present estimate we shall, even 

 after makiag allowance for the use of more machiaery, want 

 many thousands of these men to fill up the gaps made by the 

 war in the ranks of agricultural labour. Most of these ex- 

 Service men should be more or less handy ; many of them 

 will be already familiar with the use of machiaery or horses, 

 and after a few months' experience should become efficient 

 agricultural labourers. Doubtless a large number of these 

 men will prefer to emigrate, and while it is true that the 

 Mother Country cannot, in some respects, make the ex- 

 Service man as good an offer as the Dominions, or as foreign 

 coimtries like the United States of America and Argentina, 

 we think a great deal might be done, not only to bring home 

 to him the comparative advantages of life in a more settled 

 country, but to improve the conditions that have hitherto 

 prevailed." 



The war will have so utterly changed the mental 

 outlook of nearly every man that the force of habit 



