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favoured localities. What could be done to stop this? There 

 were two remedies which would be effective, but neither of 

 them he thought was politically practicable. One was a tariff 

 and the other subsidies. He did not believe the country, which 

 was predominantly urban, would stand either. They must 

 recollect that the agricultural population was a small fraction 

 of the total population of the country, and the great majority 

 of the electors, of the House of Commons, and by consequence 

 of the Government of the day, whatever party the Government 

 belonged to, would be predominantly urban. 



The fact was that the industry must work out its own 

 salvation on an economic basis, and all that the Government 

 could do or would do, was to assist by measures which he 

 would only describe as palliatives. Personally, he advocated 

 the following : First, a relief in the burden of rating where the 

 farmer was unfairly assessed compared with other people, 

 since he had to occupy such a very large amount of rateable 

 property in order to earn his living. But they must not expect 

 salvation from rating reform. He had seen the accounts of 

 several farms where accounts had been most scientifically kept, 

 and the rates only counted for about 3 per cent, of the total 

 outgoings. In the next place, rating reform was very difficult 

 because the urban ratepayers demanded relief also. In many 

 of our great towns the rates were over 20s. in the pound, and 

 it would be very difficult to deal w T ith agricultural rates apart 

 from the rating question generally, but they should press for 

 a general revision of the rating system coupled with some 

 special relief to agricultural land. 



In the next place, he thought it would be possible that the 

 Government should set up better credit facilities than existed 

 for farmers to-day. A small committee had been appointed 

 to investigate the possibility of establishing with Government 

 assistance co-operative land banks for the purpose of making 

 loans to land-owners for permanent improvements and also 

 short-term loans to farmers to enable them to carry on their 

 business. This was very necessary since the alteration in the 

 system of banking in this country and the elimination of the 

 country banker had made it difficult for farmers to obtain loans 

 on reasonable terms without collateral security. 



Then he thought thai inquiry should be instituted into the 

 question of railway rates in order to ascertain definitely whether 

 preference was or was not given to produce coming from over- 

 seas, and with a view to reducing the present rates. 



