11)21.] Government Assis tanc e to IIoutk tlti re 



71 



GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE TO 

 HORTICULTURE: 



ITS LIMITS AND ITS ]^0SST]^>]L1T]ES. 



Wm. J. Lobjoit, O.B.E., 

 Centroller of Horticulture , Ministrij of A'jrtculture. 



Expectations as to Goveriinieiit assistance to horticulture are 

 not infrequently based on a failure to appreciate what are and 

 what are not the functions of a Government Department. In 

 the demands and criticisms which one hears and reads there is 

 evidence of two distinct and divergent lines of thought among 

 growers as to w^hat the Ministry should do and what relationship 

 it should maintain to the industry. 



There are those whose conception of the whole duty of Govern- 

 ment is expressed in three words: "Let us alone." The 

 persistent neglect of agriculture, wdiich in past days was the 

 occasion of almost universal grumbling, is now looked back upon 

 'with wistful regret as a paradise lost. Most people, however, 

 have come to realise that modern society has grown too complex 

 for Government to adopt the role of merely keeping the ring 

 while competing interests tear each other according to the law^ 

 of the jungle : the community in general looking on and taking 

 its chance, whether of benefit or suffering. You cannot bring 

 back the water that has flowed under the bridge, nor can you 

 put back the hands of the clock. During the years 1914 to 

 1918 civilization sailed into a new latitude and it has had to 

 set its chronometers to a new Meridian. There is a changed 

 atmosphere ; there is an expanded outlook ; there is a new philo- 

 sophy of life, affecting those who think and those who exist 

 without thinking. You cannot go back to the untrammelled 

 individualism of the isolated country-side. The functions of 

 Government are extended and extending by force of a world-wide 

 impulse. On all hands there is the regulation of hberty in order 

 that the essence of liberty may be preserved. There are. how- 

 ever, those who expect Government to do almost everything for 

 them : a mental condition begotten of the nightmare of the war 

 period when Government invaded the verv altar places of home 

 and in the manifest impotence of individual effort men looked 

 to Government for deliverance. Just as th'Me is the call so there 

 are the limits to what a Government can do for TTorticulture. 



It can neither sup])ly capital, nor individual initiative. It 



