SECTION M.—AGRICULTURE. 
THE FINANCIAL AND ECONOMIC RE- 
SULTS OF STATE CONTROL IN 
AGRICULTURE 
ADDRESS BY 
J. A. VENN, Lirt.D., F.S.A., J.P. 
PRESIDENT OF THE SECTION. 
THE changing practices, derived from scientific progress, observable in 
post-War British agriculture, have upon recent occasions been described 
and discussed by this section of the Association. It seems, therefore, 
not inappropriate now to draw attention to some other aspects of the 
industry which can claim to be fundamental in any appraisement of our 
rural complex and have also special relevance when we meet in such a 
centre as Norwich. [I refer in particular to its financial and social economy 
as well as, more generally, to its present-day bearing upon other human 
activities, all of which have, as a direct result of State action, suffered 
great changes. And here, may I explain that in the title of this address 
the term ‘ Control’ has designedly been substituted for the arguably 
more correct ‘ Intervention ’ or the defensible ‘ Assistance,’ for none can 
aver that the policies and activities of those engaged in primary produc- 
tion are now as spontaneous and untrammelled as they would be had not 
successive Administrations, in order to counter exigencies of varying 
magnitude, visited agriculture, as Zeus visited Danie, in ‘a shower of 
gold ’—I borrow the simile of a well-known politician. 
History and economics are frequently indissoluble. This is so in the 
present instance, and, although, prior to an examination of the extra- 
ordinary changes brought about by the recent extension of State influence, 
I do not ask you retrospectively to accompany me in a study of the 
recognised medizval methods of controlling trade or of regulating prices 
and wages (some of which survived into the nineteenth century), yet I 
must, in order to illustrate the magnitude of the change that has taken 
place in the national outlook upon this subject, first crave permission to 
effect comparison between the State’s reactions to the situation confronting 
it at the present time and in two other comparatively modern periods of 
depression. I refer, of course, to (a) the two disastrous decades that 
followed upon the Peace of 1815, and (4) the eighties and the nineties of 
last century. Significantly, it is only during such times of stress—whether 
