be made. Theoretically, every contributing employer of labour would have a right to apply to obtain from the fund a sum to cover a maximum of, say, one-fourth of his wages bill in any year. This sum might in part take the form of an advance. 17. Obviously, the scheme could not succeed if any farmer contributing to the fund wanted assistance from it every year. It is accordingly to be hoped that any such scheme would be supported by large and well-to-do farmers, who would not need assistance from it. 18. Other inducements might be offered to a farmer to secure a sparing use of the fund. A second appeal for assistance in a second year might justify only the issue of a loan. 19. A scheme could be brought into action in any area in which two-thirds of the farmers and of the labourers, presently insured under the National Health Insurance Act, were ascertained to be willing to work such a scheme. 20. Of course, under such a scheme any contributing employer would be required to pay an agreed living wage, and it would be difficult to apply the scheme except to more or less regularlyemployed labourers. 21. As things are, the Unemployed Insurance Act of 1920 does not apply to agriculture. And agriculture was exempted generally on the footing that unemployment, as incident to other industries, does not commonly arise in agriculture. There is undoubtedly always a market for agricultural produce, and under the conditions imposed by nature it is impossible to have spurts in agricultural production. At the same time, it is possible to have rather quick drops in prices which bring about what is the next worst thing to unemployment, and that is a low rate of earnings. 22. Under present circumstances it will not be too difficult to relieve the situation in agriculture at the expense of labour. In ordinary times the discontented agricultural labourer can drift in to the towns, but this escape from the conditions of his own calling is not open to him at present. The obvious alternative is for him to remain and take low wages. Hence, any scheme which obviates that alternative is for agriculture very much the equivalent of a scheme of Unemployment Insurance for other industries, and if other industries which are liable to bursts of unemployment can stand the greater part of the cost of unemployment insurance, then agriculture should be able to bear the cost of a similar scheme for maintaining the rate of wages at the level of subsistence. In a sense, too, a scheme of this kind would have some of the characteristics of co-operative credit. The State loan would be secured upon the joint contributions of the farmers and labourers, and upon their willingness to see the scheme through. 23. Mass action of this kind is to a certain extent novel in the farming community, but the more there is of it the better. The formation of branches of the National Farmers' Union all over the country, and the growth of trade unionism among the agricultural labourers further facilitate such collective action, which in this country will more naturally flow in such directions as this than towards the various forms of association which have manifested themselves among peasant communities on the Continent. 24. Though it is in my view necessary before all things that wages in agriculture should be maintained at a proper level, there is another direction in which credit would be useful at the present time, i.e., for the provision of fertilisers and feeding-stuffs through co-operative Trading Societies. High farming cannot be carried on without these; but if economies are to be made, it is possible that they should be used more sparingly at the present time. 25. The law of diminishing returns almost certainly applies to the case of feeding-stuffs for fat stock beyond a certain point; and there seems reason to believe that the same may be true of fertilisers. At the same time, they are indispensable; and the ordinary farmer is well advised to get them through a co-operative Trading Society. Normally, such Societies require from their members payment in cash, and in order to give credit it would be necessary for the Trading Societies to have rather more capital than they usually command. It might be possible for arrangements to be made for the banks to give such Societies reasonable accommodation for a term of years, if their solvency and efficiency were certified by a public Department. It will be objected that this is assisting co-operation in a manner unfair to the private trader. To this it seems fair to retort that if the urban population insists that the farmer is to make his way without protection and at the same time social considerations make it undesirable for the present form of our rural economy to be replaced by large farms extending to 2,000 acres, the town-dwelling majority has no right to deny the farmer every facility for collective purchase and sale, such as are the very minimum of improvement in the organisation of an industry which is fatally handicapped by being carried on in a very great number of small units. 26. With some such measures the arable farming industry of this country should have time to look round. Merely to put arable land back everywhere under grass for stock raising would put England back to where a country like Hungary was a hundred years ago. We tend to fail where agricultural processes become complicated. We breed and feed stock well and grow good staple crops. Our farming, however, is conducted on the assumption that the town consumer should always be prepared to take the produce just as it leaves the farmer. Perhaps this is the result of our farmers having had earlier than those of other countries a considerable market near at hand in the form of a numerous town population. Certainly we are backward at working up agricultural produce, except in cheese-making and bacon-curing. 27. The farmers in such continental countries as Germany, Belgium, Bohemia and Northern France have a great advantage over our arable farmers in respect that two of their most important crops, sugar-beet and potatoes, are the raw material of industry. With us agriculture is not thus co-ordinated with industry. Our root crops are only grown to be eaten by stock, and if the whole of our potatoes cannot be consumed at once by the urban population, the farmer who grows potatoes is in a bad way. DEPARTMENTAL COMMITTEE ON DISTRIBUTION AND PRICES OF INTERIM REPORT ON MILK AND MILK PRODUCTS. Presented to Parliament by Command of His Majesty. Dieu LONDON: PUBLISHED BY HIS MAJESTY'S STATIONERY OFFICE. To be purchased through any Bookseller or directly from IMPERIAL HOUSE, KINGSWAY, LONDON, W.C. 2, and 28, ABINGDON STREET, LONDON, S.W. 1; |