96 SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 
been brought under monopolistic control or centralised supervision in 
order that governments may be enabled to support trade and industrial 
organisations in their efforts to regulate production and prices. National 
cartels have been strengthened and international cartels have been 
difficult to maintain. Governments everywhere have used the oppor- 
tunities thus presented to them to turn to narrow national account the 
general tendency already in force towards large-scale organisation and 
monopolistic control. It may be that these short-term forces will effect 
deeper and more permanent changes in the economic system of the world 
than could ever have been accomplished by the longer-term forces which 
they supplement. 
IV. 
In designing and improving methods for securing national economic 
isolation statesmen often appear to act on the assumption that absolute 
self-sufficiency is an ideal capable of practical realisation. This, assuredly, 
is not the case. Apart from the fact that the price which would have to 
be paid is prohibitive, experience has shown that new devices by new 
traders can make headway even against the most drastic restrictions yet 
devised. But at a price which seems reasonable in the short-run or the 
real burden of which is not immediately apparent, a very considerable 
degree of economic self-sufficiency can be attained by small as well as by 
large nations especially if the measures pursued are in harmony with the 
long-term forces favouring the trend. Little attention, however, is paid 
to this proviso when regulations are being drafted; and, even when 
circumstances are propitious for the success of an attempt at further 
isolation, disaster often ensues through too vigorous use of double-edged 
weapons, which, when wielded at all, demand more skill in management 
than is ever likely to be available. 
Much can be learned from a study of the partial closing of markets in 
European countries to agricultural products from the remaining countries 
in the world. These older industrial counties aim at developing regulated 
agricultural production for reasons partly creditable and partly sinister. 
German import duties on wheat and rye, for example, may be anything 
in the neighbourhood of 300 per cent. of the general world market prices. 
France plans to be, and is in fact, largely self-contained in cereals. Wheat 
production is encouraged in England by guaranteed prices and by enact- 
ments designed to secure that all is sold which is produced. In every 
European country some or every branch of agriculture receives subsidy or 
high protection. The consequences of these measures for the newer 
extra-European agricultural countries are serious. As example, consider 
the case of New Zealand with exports entirely agricultural and the largest 
foreign trade per head of population of any country in the world. The 
story of her troubles is set out in the adjoining table of indices which covers 
the years of intensification of agricultural self-sufficiency in Europe. 
Commenting on this table a New Zealand Government official publica- 
tion points out ‘ that in the aggregate the volume of production has been 
well maintained but the outcome of trading operations may be summed 
up as follows: Between 1928 and 1932 the index figures indicate that the 
