M— AGRICULTURE 253 



buyer of the products of other industries ? Only a rough and possibly 

 unreliable estimate can be given. According to the farm accounts 

 obtained for 245 Scottish farms, of different kinds and in different districts, 

 for the years 1934-35, the estimated expenditure on building materials, 

 implements and machinery, electricity, fuel, chemicals, fertilisers, etc., 

 amounted to from 145. to 20^. per acre of cultivated land. Admittedly 

 this is a small sample on which to base a generalisation, but, taking it for 

 what it is worth, it would represent a gross total of from twenty to thirty 

 million pounds for the whole country. The corresponding figures per 

 acre are for Denmark 26s. (based on 810 farm accounts for 1935-36), 

 and for Norway from 12s. to 21s. 



It may be noted that no allowance is made for the personal purchases 

 of the agricultural population, which presumably would be made, more 

 or less, no matter what the employment of the people might be. The 

 figures represent the purchases of the agricultural industry as such, and 

 show to what extent it is the customer of other industries. 



The word " intervention ' is sometimes used as being equivalent to 

 control. In this paper it has a wider meaning and is intended to cover the 

 various ways in which the action of the State may impinge on agriculture — 

 the ' impact ' of the State on agriculture, to borrow the word employed 

 by Sir Josiah Stamp in his presidential address to the Association last 

 year. Intervention, according to this definition, falls broadly into three 

 categories : 



1. Control, i.e. statutory compulsion, enforced by penalties. 



2. The statutory provision of means by which agriculturists may take 

 voluntary action to do certain things and, in the event of such action, to 

 compel a minority to conform to the wishes of a majority. 



3. The giving of direct or indirect assistance, financial, advisory, 

 protective, etc. 



Let us first consider control. A complete stranger visiting these islands 

 might receive an impression, perhaps from an agricultural newspaper, 

 or a farmer's meeting, that the agriculturists were oppressed by the rules 

 and regulations of a government that joyed in tyranny, aided by a horde 

 of official tormentors who not only battened on the sufferers but were 

 often accused of being the real inventors of the legislative boots and 

 thumb-screws. The depth and permanence of that impression would 

 depend in the first place on where the stranger came from. If he 

 came from certain European states, the impression might be fleeting ; 

 comparing conditions here with those to which he had been accustomed, 

 he might soon say, ' Here is peace : here indeed is freedom.' And if he 

 looked a little under the surface and studied the relation of state and 

 people in this democratic country, he would discover that a government, 

 no matter how inspired by good intentions and a large majority, could 

 rarely if ever pass a law that was unacceptable to the general community, 

 agricultural or other, or, if it succeeded in doing so, would find it very 

 hard to administer it effectively. To legislate in advance of public opinion 

 is no easy matter. Those who have to do with the formulation of legisla- 

 tive proposals, subsequently to be embodied in parliamentary bills, know 

 that an Act of Parliament does not emerge suddenly, fully armed from the 



