Essays in Liberalism Part 12

It is worth while tracing out what has actually happened. The Government's Agriculture Act of 1921 contained four great principles:--(i) that we must have more food produced in this country (_a_) as an insurance against risk of war, (_b_) so as to meet our post-war conditions as a debtor nation by importing less of our food supplies; (ii) that as the most productive farming is arable farming, and as by maintaining a proper proportion of arable we can on emergency make ourselves independent for our food supplies for an indefinite time, farmers should be guaranteed against loss on their arable rotations; (iii) that if farmers are to be required to produce more they must have clear legal rights to farm their land in the most productive way, a greater compensation for disturbance; (iv) that as the first three principles give security to the nation and to the farmer, it is desirable also to give security to the worker by permanently continuing the war-time system of Agricultural Wages Boards.

These principles were duly embodied in the Bill as it left the House of Commons:--

(i) The Ministry of Agriculture, acting through the County Agricultural Committees, was given powers to insist on a certain standard of arable cultivation, as well as in minor matters, such as control of weeds and of rabbits;

(ii) The difference between the ascertained market price and the estimated cost of production on his wheat and oat acreage was guaranteed to the farmer, the guarantee not to be altered except after four years'

notice;

(iii) The landlord had to forfeit a year's rent if a tenant was disturbed except for bad farming, or four years' rent if the disturbance was capricious;

(iv) The existing Wages Board system was continued.

THE DESTRUCTION OF A POLICY

The gradual destruction of this policy began in the House of Lords. They allowed themselves to be swept away by the popular cry against Government interference with industry, and cut out the power of control of cultivation. The Prime Minister had said that this was an absolutely essential part of the Bill, and of the Government's policy, but the Government quietly and characteristically accepted the Lords' amendment and the Bill was pa.s.sed.

Then troubles began. Other industries began to ask why the Government satisfied agriculture and not them, and as the Government could not plead their control of agriculture in justification, no real reply was possible. Also the cold fit came on as regards national expenditure. The Bill for the corn subsidies threatened to be very high. Though Europe was starving, it could not buy, so cheap American grain flooded our markets; but cost of production here was still at its peak, and, for oats especially, the amount to be paid to the farmer threatened to be large. It was realised that it might cost 25-30 millions to implement the guarantees for the first year, and perhaps 10-12 millions a year later. In short, the guarantees had to go. Instead of four years' notice of any change, a Bill to repeal the great Act was introduced five months after it had been pa.s.sed. And it was unfortunately part of the bargain with the farmers who received for the single season perhaps six or eight millions less than they might have been ent.i.tled to under the Act, that the Wages Boards should be abolished--and they were. There remained of the original structure only the depreciation of the value of all agricultural landowners' property by about one-twentieth, owing to the extra compensation for disturbance.

Every one felt that they had been had, and they had been. The industry which had lately been talked up and made much of was dumped into the dustbin. The farmers had lost their guarantees on the strength of which, in many cases, they had bought their farms dear or planned their rotations. The labourers, who particularly needed the protection of Wages Boards during a time of fall in cost of living and unemployment, had lost all legal protection. The landlords, willing enough to give what was asked of them if any national purpose was to be served, found that their loss brought no corresponding national gain. Agriculture retired as far as it could from any contact with perfidious Governments, to lick its wounds.

That is not a good basis upon which to build intensive cultivation or any other active policy. There being now no legal or patriotic call to intensive production, we are driven back to ask, "Does intensive production pay?" and the broad answer is that at a time of low prices it does not. There is no doubt that slowly and steadily education will gradually improve farming, and that farmers will learn to find out what parts of their business pay best and to concentrate upon them. There is also no doubt that even at low prices there is plenty of scope for better farming, and that better manuring, particularly of gra.s.s land, will pay. But the farmer is faced with an economic principle--the law of diminishing returns. It may be stated thus: beyond a certain point which rises and falls directly with the value of the product, extra doses of labour and manure do not give a corresponding return. It is this principle which accounts for what we see everywhere--that farmers are tending to economise as much as they can on their labour and to let arable land go back to gra.s.s.

And if this is clear to farmers who are thinking of intensive arable farming, still more is it true in comparing arable with gra.s.s. If you take the same sort of quant.i.ty of arable and gra.s.s farms, farmed by men of the same skill and diligence, over a range of seasons under low world prices for farm produce, you will, I believe, find something like this: gra.s.s land needs half the capital and one-third of the labour of arable; it produces three-quarters the receipts with half the payments, and yields double the profit per acre and four times the profit on capital.

The moral of all this is clear. Unless the nation is willing to go back to protection for agriculture, which I am glad to believe in the general interest unthinkable, and unless it is willing to guarantee the farmer against loss from that method of agriculture which means most production and most employment, we must let the farmer set the tune and farm in the way it best suits him to farm. We must try, in fact, not to talk too much nonsense about intensive production as the cure for agricultural depression. It is useful to remember that all countries overseas which combine high wages with agricultural prosperity have a very low output per acre judged by our standards.

EMPLOYMENT AND WAGES

It follows directly from what I have just said that a time of high costs and low prices like the present, like the time of lower costs but still lower prices of the late '80's and early '90's, is not a favourable time for expecting employment to be brisk or wages high. And reasons other than those which we have yet considered make the farmer feel his labour to be specially burdensome at present. He finds that the prices he gets on the average are one and one-third times what they were before the war: what he has to buy costing from one and a half to one and two-thirds what it cost before the war; and he is expected in very many counties in England and Wales to pay his workers about double what he paid before the war. This is a strong point for him. But the labourers'

position is just as strong. "I was not sufficiently well paid before the war. If this is to be recognised in any way at all, I must at the present cost of living (185) have double my pre-war wages." It is certainly beyond all question that 30/- a week, which is the present wage over a large part of England, is not, even with only 3/- a week rent for house and garden, enough to keep a man and his wife and family in a state of real efficiency. Yet I know from personal experience that this fact is not properly recognised in practice. If one tries to pay more one is regarded as a very rich man, and an extremely stupid one--an idea erroneous as to one's wealth and possibly exaggerated as to one's mentality.

How have the two conflicting views of farmer and labourer been reconciled in practice. I can only say that so far as my own knowledge extends--bearing in mind that the farmer has not the business man's habit of cheerfully setting off a bad year against a good (for the business man knows that trade must improve some time, and then he will make profits, while the farmer has no certainty that things will improve)--things might well have been worse. There has been a good deal of mutual consideration and desire to make the best of difficult circ.u.mstances. I have, however, little doubt that it would have been better had the Wages Boards, which had controlled the rise in wages during the rise in the cost of living, regulated the fall in wages during its fall--relaxing control perhaps later when things became more stable.

The reason why I think that things might have been worse is that the District Wages Committee left a good legacy to the voluntary Conciliation Committees which followed them--the men serving on the latter were those who under the Wages Board system had learned to negotiate with and to know and respect the workers--generally some of the best farmers in their districts--and they genuinely tried not to let the workers down with too much of a b.u.mp; on the other hand, they knew that the only value their recommendations could have was that they should be voluntarily observed, and therefore they took care not to recommend rates higher than those which the least favourably situated farmers in the district could manage to pay--which meant rates lower than many might have been willing to give. This means that any general rate agreed to voluntarily will be rather on the low side. But I would rather have a rate which is generally observed, even if it is rather low, than that every farmer should be a law unto himself. If there is no recognised standard, and one man with impunity pays a lower rate than his neighbours, other rates also tend to come down, and then the process begins over again.

Looking to the future, the only thing that I can say with any certainty about the wages question is that it needs very careful watching. Let us be sure first of our principle, that the first charge on land, as on any other industry, should be a reasonable standard of living for the workers. Then let us be sure of the fact that there is over a very large part of England and Wales no certain prospect of an improvement in the condition of the labourer compared with conditions ten years ago. The dangers to be feared are that in the present lamentable weakness of the men's unions large sections of farmers may break away from the recommendations of their leaders; and that if depression continues and war savings become depleted farmers will tend to push wages down in self-preservation. These things must be watched. If the general condition of agriculture improves without a corresponding improvement in the workers' condition, or if conditions get worse and the brunt of the burden is transferred to the labourer, we ought to be prepared to advocate a return to the old Wages Boards or the adoption of a Trade Board system. It must, I think, be a cardinal point of our Liberal faith that though it is better to leave industrial questions to be adjusted as much as possible by the parties concerned in the industry, the State must be ready to step in in any case in which the workers have not developed the power by their own combination to secure reasonable conditions and prospects. It is to the prospects that I now turn.

ACCESS TO THE LAND

I mean by this that there should be as many chances as possible for men and women who have an inclination for country pursuits to take up cultivation of the soil; the freest opportunity for experiment in making a living out of the land; and good chances for those who have started on the land ladder to rise to the top of it.

The three things which stand in the way are:--

(i) The cost of building and equipment;

(ii) The practice under which the cultivator provides all the movable capital;

(iii) The handicap on free use of land imposed upon its owners by the compensation clauses of the Agriculture Act.

These obstacles do real harm, in the first place, because a very large proportion of farms in this country are the wrong size: too large for a man to work with his hands, and too much for him to work with his head, as Sir Thomas Middleton has well said. Figures show quite conclusively that whether you take production per acre or production per man, the farm of from 100 to 150 acres is economically the worst-sized unit.

Probably more than half of our farms lie between 70 and 100 acres. We should get far more out of the land if all were either below 80--so that a man and his family could manage them--or above 180, so that there would be a chance of applying to production the most scientific methods and up-to-date machinery.

But movement, either towards breaking up existing holdings or throwing them together, will be extremely slow. The one process means building new houses and buildings, which is prohibitive in price; and the other, also fresh building and the abandonment of hearths and homes, which is prohibited both by price and by sentiment. Any change in either direction is almost prohibitive to the new poor landowner cla.s.s, because if one makes any change, except when a tenant dies or moves of his own accord, one forfeits a year's rent.

I have not yet mentioned the difficulty about capital. Under our British method, if a man wants a farm he must have capital--about 10 per arable acre and about 5 for gra.s.s. This is a great bar to freedom of experiment and the greatest bar on the way up the agricultural ladder.

There ought to be free access to our farms by town brains, which can often strike out new and profitable lines if given a chance. It is not good for agriculture, and it does not promote that sympathy and contact and interchange which should exist between town and country, that a start in farming should need a heavy supply of capital. If our landlords were better off they might well try some of the continental systems, under which the landlord provides not only the farm and buildings, but the stock and equipment, and receives in addition to a fair rent for the land half the profits of the farm. But it is vain to hope for this under present conditions, and, for good or ill, the newly rich does not buy land. He knows too much, and he can get what he wants without it. He may lease a house, he does take shooting, but he won't buy an estate.

When thinking of the importance of freedom of experiment and of a ladder with no missing rungs, I have my mind on the possibility of the owner of one estate of from 5,000 to 10,000 acres throwing all the farms and many of the fields together and making his best tenants fellow-directors with him of a joint enterprise, one doing the buying and selling, one looking after the power and the tractors and implements, one planning the agricultural processes, one directing the labour and so on. This gives a prospect of the greatest production and the greatest profit, and it gives a really good labourer a chance which at present he has not got.

At present, unless he leaves the land, in nine cases out of ten once a labourer always a labourer. My vision would give him a chance to become, first, foreman, then a.s.sistant manager, manager, director, and managing-director. It ought to be tried--but how one's tenants would loathe it, and quite natural too! At present if things go wrong, if it's not the fault of the Government or the weather, it's the farmer's own fault. On my joint-stock estate every director and manager would feel that all his colleagues were letting him down and destroying his profits. It is hard to make people accept at all readily, in practice, the teaching that they are their brothers' keeper.

The scheme could hardly be started with men accustomed to the present methods, and the cost of obtaining vacant possession of land would make it difficult to try with new men. I am sure, however, that something of the sort is a good and hopeful idea, and the best way of making the ladder complete. And I am emboldened to think that something of the sort will be tried gradually in some places, when I see the number of landlords' sons who are in this and other universities taking the best courses they can get in the science and economics of agriculture. They know this is the only way to retain a remnant of the old acres. It is quite new since the war--and a most hopeful sign.

INDEPENDENCE

I need not urge the importance in our villages of real independence of life. It was the absence of independence combined with long working hours and little occupation for the hours of leisure, which, more than low wages, caused the pre-war exodus from the country. Should the prospects of industry improve, but agriculture remain depressed, there will be another exodus from the country-side of the best of the young men who have come back to it after the war. It is of first-cla.s.s importance, both from the national and from the agricultural point of view, that they should stay, for there was a real danger before the war that agriculture might become a residual industry, carried on mainly by them, too lethargic in mind and body to do anything else.

In a preface which he wrote to Volume I of the Land Report, as chairman of Lloyd George's Land Inquiry Committee (it seems a long time ago now that Lloyd George was a keen land reformer), my father sketched out the idea of setting up commissions to report parish by parish in each county, in the same way that commissions have reported on the parochial charities. They would record how the land was distributed, whether the influence of the landowners told for freedom or against it, whether there was a chance for the labourer to get on to the land and to mount the ladder. Whether there was an efficient village inst.i.tute, whether there were enough allotments conveniently situated, whether the cottagers were allowed to keep pigs and poultry, and what the health and housing were like.

It is a good idea, and should be borne in mind. I confess I do not know enough to know whether it is now as desirable as it seemed to be before the war. I would fain hope not, but I am not sure. I believe that there is a good deal more real independent life in the villages now than there was ten years ago. There are, I think, now fewer villages like some in North Yorkshire before the war, in which the only chance for a Liberal candidate to have a meeting was to have it in the open-air, after dark on a night with no moon, and even then he needed a big voice--for his immediate audience was apt to be two dogs and a pig. Now, it seems to me that people like having political meetings going on, but do not bother to listen to any of them.

As to the present, there has been lately, within my knowledge, a great building of village inst.i.tutes. There has been a tremendous development of football. Village industries, under the wise encouragement of the Development Commission, are reviving. Motor buses make access to town amus.e.m.e.nts much easier, and cinemas come out into the village. There is revived interest and very keen compet.i.tion in the allotment and cottage garden shows. Thus it is, at any rate, down our way--but no one can know more than his own bit of country. On these and similar matters we ought to think and watch and meet together to report and discuss. We need more Maurice Hewletts and Mrs. Sturge Grettons to tell us how things really are, for nothing is so difficult to visualise as what is going on slowly in one's own parish.

CO-OPERATION

I come lastly to co-operation. You will think me biased when I speak of its possibilities. I am. I have been for eighteen years on the governing body of the Agricultural Organisation Society, and happen now to be its chairman, and am therefore closely in touch with the work of organising co-operative effort. One sees fairly clearly how difficult it is to make any cla.s.s of English agriculturists combine for any mutual purpose, how worth while it is, and what almost unexpected opportunities of useful work still exist. Thanks largely to untiring work by Sir Leslie Scott--who gave up the chairmanship of the society on his recent appointment as Solicitor-General--the country is now fairly covered by societies for purchasing requirements co-operatively--princ.i.p.ally fertilisers, feeding-stuffs, and seeds. There are also affiliated to the movement I have mentioned, many useful co-operative auction marts, slaughter-house societies, bacon factories, wool societies, egg and poultry societies, and fruit and garden produce societies (but not nearly enough), besides a thousand or so societies of allotment holders which, thanks largely to our friend, George Nicholls, set all the others an example in keenness and loyalty to their parent body.

The _ideal_ is that where a society exists the main raw materials of the industry shall be bought wholesale instead of retail, and the main products of the industry sold retail instead of wholesale; that thereby middlemen's and other profits shall be reduced to a reasonable figure, and that the consumer shall get the most efficient possible service with regard to his supplies. It is also the ideal that farmers and others shall learn more comradeship and brotherhood; that the big and small men alike shall become one community bound together for many common purposes, and that thus the cultivators of the soil shall lose that isolation and selfishness which is a reproach against them. The ideal is, however, not always realised. The farmer likes to have a co-operative society to keep down other people's prices, but, having helped to form a society, he does not see why he should be loyal to it if a trader offers him anything a shilling a ton cheaper. A good committee is formed, but the members think they hold their offices mainly in order to get first cut for themselves at some good bargain the society has made, and they start with the delusion that they are good men of business. Things, therefore, get into the hands of the manager, and it is astonishing how much more quickly a bad manager can lose money than a good one can make it. And if in these and other ways it is uphill work with farmers' societies, the work is still more uphill with small-holders. It is the breath of their nostrils to bargain individually, and if a society is started they will only send their stuff to be sold when they and every one else have a glut, ungraded and badly packed--and then they grumble at getting a low price.

But all co-operative work is abundantly worth while. And the field of co-operation is not limited to the purchase of supplies or the sale of produce. It ought to cover the use of tractors and threshing sets and the installation and distribution of power. And if agriculture gets a chance of settling down to a moderate amount of stability and prosperity, it would not be beyond the bounds of hope that part, at any rate, of the profits of co-operative enterprise should be used to develop the amenities of the common life of the community--to provide prizes for the sports and the flower show--the capital to start an industry for the winter evenings, and even seats for the old people round the village green.

Times are not propitious for increasing the productivity of our land, excepting by the slow processes of education--which work particularly slowly in agriculture. Nor are they immediately propitious for raising the workers' standard of life, though we should never leave go of this as an essential. But many of us can, if we will, help a good man to start on the land, or help a man who has made good on the land to do better. Many of us can help to develop real independence of life in the villages and, through co-operation, those kindly virtues of friendliness and helpfulness to others and willingness to work for common ends which are sometimes not so common as they might be. And those who _can_ do any of these things _should_, without waiting for legislation--for the legislator is a bruised reed.