12 
LAND & WATER 
'February 15, 1917 
from ? It used to be a common .e;ibc that any fool 
thought himself capable of managing successfully an liotol 
or a newspaper, two very complicated businesses that 
appear perfectly simple on the surface. But it is evident 
that to these enterprises a third nuist be added — agri- 
culture. To any one possessing the slightest ac(]uaintance 
with the intricacies of tillage and stock-raising, the reams 
of nonsense that ha\e been written on the subject are 
amazing. The technical knowledge which a mod(^rn 
farmer and to a leaser but appreciable degree which a farm 
l\and must possess in order to get the best and most out 
of the land, grows greater every year, and before the war 
there was a strong movement in action to increase such 
technical knowledge by a carefully planned system of 
education. Now when crops become a question of, 
national importance, we are asked to believe that any 
man or woman is capable of filling the place of a farmer or 
a farm liand. The thing is preposterous and would be 
laughable were the situation less serious. 
It was a Pharoah which knew not Joseph — Joseph who 
administered Egypt when there was a famine in the land 
—who imposed the all but impossible task upon the 
Israelites, and people are beginning to ask whether there 
must indeed be a serious shortage of food in these islands 
before an Administration arises to deal sensibly with agri- 
culture. To give a concrete instance : I71 order to en- 
courage the British farmer to grow more wheat and to 
insure him against a possible loss which competition with 
the wheat areas of the whole world may entail, the 
question of Government guaranteeing that the minimum 
price of his wheat shall not fall below 40s. a quarter o\er 
a period of ten years, lias been urged again and again. 
Five years ago Captain Charles Bathurst, Parliamentary 
Secretary to the Ministry of Food, published his 
pamphlet "To Avoid National Starvation" in which 
this question was discussed ; two years previously, Sir 
Herbert Matthews, Secretary of the Central Chamber of 
Agriculture, had written a forcible letter to the Morning 
Post on the very same subject. At the beginning of tlic 
war the policy was again urged upon the Government, and 
to-day among the many scientific agriculturists whom the 
Government has enlisted in its services in one capacity 
or another, there is hardly one who does not ad\'ocate 
the same action. It had been hoped that by now Mr. 
Prothero, who has definitely expressed an opinion in 
favour of a guaranteed minimum price, would ha\T been 
able to announce that a decision on this vital point had 
at last been arrived at. It is the keystone of the future 
agricultural prosperity of these islands, and we are 
learning to-day — perhaps the lesson may prove a hard 
one before it is mastered — that a country cannot be re- 
garded as secure in which agriculture is not prosperous. 
On one common aspect of this particular point we may 
touch lightlj-. The fear finds frequent expression that 
unless stringent measures are taken, farmers will exploit 
the necessities of the people for their own advantage. 
■No doubt there exist mean-hearted men in farmhouses, 
as in other human habitations — men who would stoop 
to such practices for private profit, but in time of war 
adequate protection should not be ditficult. Italy put 
down profiteering in food supplies \\-ith a strong hand by 
punishing with imprisonment the leaders in the business. 
They did not prosecute the small but the big men, and 
there ought to be no compunction in stamping out the e\il 
here, if it became necessary, in the same drastic manner. 
It were foolishness to talk in this connection of the 
liberty of the subject during times like these when e\'ery 
honest and just man and woman are willingly surrendering 
to the State personal liberty in order that the \ictory 
of freedom and humanity may be full and complete. 
It would be less than justice to the present Government 
and to its predecessor if it were not mentioned that the 
political troubles and trials of |British agriculture have 
their origin in traditional Parliamentary apathy and not 
in personal prejudice or partisan animosity. Few people 
outside the agricultural community probably realise that 
it is less than thirty' years since the Board of Agriculture 
came into existence, and then only after twenty years of 
steady and . unremitting agitation. Lord Salisbury 
created it in 1889, and Lord Chaplin, then Mr. Henry 
Chaplin, was its first President. The original idea was 
to create a Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce, 
but Commerce was dropped at an early stage, and at a 
much later stage Fisheries were added. The connection 
between. the harvests of the land and of the -sea has always 
been obscure, beyond the fact that both are dependent on 
skilled labour. During the.war a new anomaly has arisen ; 
Mr. Prothero. in his Agricultural guise, has to wrestle with 
the War Oflice for the labour he needs for the fields, hut 
the Fisheries part of him has to treat with the Admiralty, 
for it seems that iishermen can only be converted into 
sailormcn and not into soldiers. Less than ten years ago 
the Board of Agriculture was the only (iovernment 
Department .which had not a second representative in 
either Houses of Parliament, and even now its oflices are 
spread over Whitehall in five or six different houses. 
This brief sketch of the Department explains better 
than volumes the neglect and unpopularity of this most 
\ital industry at Westminster. There is never an agri- 
cultural debate in the House which does not echo this 
traditional listless spirit, and until it is broken down, 
and the people generally and their Parliamentary repre- 
senlati\es in particular are taught to xtnderstand the 
national significance of thriving agriculture, in its full 
length and breadth and height and depth, the country 
must expect a repetition of such errors and miscalculations 
as those we deplore to-day. Mr. Prothero has not only 
to stimulate production in 1917 and in 1918, but he has 
to bring home to the public the complex problems which 
underlie a sound and healthy national agricultural policy. 
It is a Herculean task, but now, if ever, is an opportunity 
for its accomplishment. 
It is a question much bigger than appears on the face 
of it, for history records that no nation has survived which 
has not had as its rock of foundation a sound rural 
economy. It was so in the case of Ass^'ria, it was the 
same with the Roman Empire. On the continent of 
Europe this truism has been always accepted, and in the 
case of Germany Bismarck deliberately encouraged and 
favoured the Agrarian Party because he realised that 
without a generous agricultural policy Germany might 
find herself at the mercy of the surrounding nations. 
It is only a commonplace to say that had agriculture 
been treated by the Central Empires in the way it has 
been dealt with by the successive Govenuuents of this 
country, the war would have been at an end months ago, 
simply through the enemies' inability to withstand the 
effects of the blockade. It is due to its scientific and 
skilfully planned system of cultivation of the soil that 
Cicrmany has been enabled to carry on the war to its 
present stage. 
The labour, question here has been rendered the more 
difficult by unnecessary agitation. The young farmer who 
remained on his farm doing work which e\-ery one to-day 
realises is of supreme national importance, was a few 
months ago held up to public obloquy as a slacker. 
Instances could be gi\'en where strong personal influence 
had to be brought to bear in order to keep men on their 
farms which would have gone to pieces had they joined 
up. and other cases could be mentioned where even this 
infiuence has failed. Think also of the enormous loss in 
the aggregate incurred by the waste of time of both 
masters and men attending local and county tribunals in 
ord?r to appeal and to prove the necessity of labour on 
the farms. E\'en when the appeal has been successful it 
has meant that one, two or even three days have been 
thrown away, at a season when every hour is of vital 
\-aluc if the harvests are to be increased. Not only are 
the men idle but teams of horses also. It is useless 
at this time of day to look for salvation to tractor ploughs 
on the chess-board enclosures of this over-hedged land. 
From the very outbreak, of the war agriculture, 
through such representative bodies as the Farmers' Club 
and the Central Chamber of Agriculture assumed a wide 
and patriotic outlook. On August 6th, 1914, the Secre- 
tary of the latter body sent a letter to the Press advoca- 
ting the consumption of the very bread we are eating 
to-day " as one means of extending the bread supply." 
(iovernmental ad\ice was sought on the best way of 
increasing the production of cereals, but farmers were told 
curtly to carry on as though circumstances were normal. 
These facts should be borne in mind at a moment when ill- 
informed public opinion is inclined to turn round and 
abuse the farmer. " He has been so harassed from 
pillar to post," to quote Mr. Prothero's words, "that 
he has not known where he was." But this vexatious 
policy must cease, and at once, if the nation is to obtain 
from him the full help which it now urgi^ntl\- requires. 
