1092 



Home-Grown Wheat Prices. 



[Mar., 



understand, that the price that will be paid to the farmer in 

 respect of wheat which he markets will be a price which is 

 determined by the cost of milling wheat imported during the 

 two preceding months." 



With regard to the extent to which farmers were deprived of a 

 free market, the Prime Minister observed that: "Until the 

 market is restored to normal conditions, as long as you have the 

 present relations between the millers and the Government, al- 

 though there is de -control and you have got a free market, you 

 are entitled to say that you are affected to a certain extent by the 

 conditions which I indicate. We therefore do not propose to take 

 advantage of the fact that we have de-controlled wheat on the 

 25th January. We shall stand by the pledge on the other 

 assumption, but the transactions must be governed, of course, 



by the conditions laid down by me here I shall ask 



you, upon that basis, to meet the Ministry of Agriculture, the 

 Ministry of Food and the Treasury, to thrash out exactly what, 

 in figures, the working out of these conditions will mean. Do 

 not let us have any further misunderstandings. If you do not 

 arrrive at an agreement, come back again and we will discuss it. 

 All I can say to you now is that I am deeply concerned that there 

 should be no sense among the farmers of the country that we 

 have broken faith with them. As far as I am personally con- 

 cerned, I regard it as a matter of personal honour. I give you 

 my personal word, as well as my word as Head of the Govern- 

 ment I feel deeply concerned that the farmers should 



not feel that they have been misled in the least. Here is another 

 thing I want to say. I am not going to interpret these words in 

 a technical sense, to give a purely legal interpretation to them. 

 I want to give the interpretation to them that an ordinary plain 

 man would give to them. After all, farmers are not lawyers. 

 I should like to put myself in the position of a farmer reading 

 these words, and say to myself, ' What would I understand, if 

 I were a farmer, as to what guarantee I was getting? ' 



" A bargain is a bargain, which means you cannot say, when it 

 happens to be against you, ' That is not what I understood,' 

 and on that you cannot say, ' Well, I think that is what it 

 means,' because it happens to be in your favour. I only want 

 to have an interpretation of it that plain, honest, straightforward 

 men of business, not straining words and not quibbling about 

 the meaning of words, would place upon it. By that the Govern- 

 ment stand, and I am specially concerned to stand by it myself, 

 and I mean to do it." 



