M.—AGRICULTURE 221 
Dominions and foreign countries, as a result of the restrictions imposed ; 
and the political and economic risks attaching to any serious increase in 
the cost of urban living brought about by a virtually monopolistic and 
dominant rural hegemony. Upon these questions, that are of over- 
whelming importance and pregnant with danger, each must form his own 
conclusions. Fundamentally, too, the farmer whose production costs 
are high now secures recognition that formerly was the reward of his 
more efficient brethren. Nor can it be denied that this system of regulated 
production will, as a concomitant to increased profits for those permitted 
to remain, logically necessitate the exercise of restraint upon every soil 
product, including those essential to health, raised upon each commercial 
unit of land, which in turn must bring under review the determination of 
rent as well as (now) profits and wages. Whether justified on economic 
grounds, such a procedure would be open to attacks based on other, and 
wider, considerations, very difficult to counter. Even technically, a 
quota system has inherent disadvantages which render its stability un- 
certain and necessitate frequent revisions and adjustments to neutralise 
fluctuations in different sources of supply and in prices. Home producers 
prefer import duties to restriction, and we in this country must not 
forget that the latter method presents to our own kith and kin overseas a 
virtually insoluble problem-in the shape of consequential control of their 
own individual producers. It is therefore certain that the latest pro- 
posals, initiating a movement from quotas to levies, with a modicum of 
Dominion preference, will meet with approval from both parties. During 
the last two or three years we have travelled farther than in the whole of 
the previous century, and, perhaps kindly, ‘ the iniquity of oblivion has 
scattered her poppy,’ for we are in danger of forgetting to what an extent 
our rural and national economy has been transformed by official recog- 
nition of some of the above-mentioned paradoxes. 
Although my role has been merely that of expositor, I hope neverthe- 
less that I have been sufficiently provocative to call forth the opinions 
of others upon these reflections. It is said that ‘a rolling stone gathers no 
moss,’ but, may I suggest that, if, in its third descent during a century into 
the valley of depression, British agriculture gained a protective covering 
sufficiently effective to shield it from the worst economic shocks, in future 
this accretion may actually hamper it when progressing over the smoother 
and level terrain of normality that we hope lies in front of it? One is 
left wondering if the present system of ‘ reorganisation ’ will survive any 
considerable passage of time, or whether, legislation having telescoped 
chronology, the comparatively near future may not witness, even as 
subsidies gave way to planned economy, some relaxation from control, 
some restoration of individual liberty of action, initated, maybe, by nation- 
wide restoration of the gold standard giving greater freedom to world 
trade, and accompanied by the abolition of fear and avarice which would 
increase reciprocally the demand both for manufactured articles and 
ptimary commodities. One of the world’s dictators has recently uttered 
the following dictum : ‘ What the-situation calls for is the free movement 
of goods, of people, of capital, and of credit.’ We, in these islands, have 
more to gain than any other nation by such a consummation. 
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