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meet the present rate of growth of the world's white population. So far as can be judged from the data available, such increase as is taking place in the cultivated area is far below the minimum requirement indicated. The statistics of the International Institute of Agriculture state that the acreage devoted to the eight principal food crops-wheat, rye, oats, barley, maize, rice, potatoes, and sugar beet-had in 1924 only increased by 10 million acres over the average for the years 1909 to 1913. Of wheat there were actually five and a-half million acres less in 1924 than in the five pre-war years. To a large degree this decline is only the consequence of the great break of prices in 1921, and there has already been a considerable recovery from the minimum position of 1922, but there are few signs of sufficient extension of the producing area to meet the yearly growth of population.

Some students of the wheat situation consider that we have already reached a condition where a crop failure in one only of the great producing countries will induce something in the nature of a panic rise of price. When we are concerned with an article in universal demand, a very small restriction in the supply below the normal needs of the community leads to a disproportionate increase in price. Wheat prices have been greatly stabilized by the wide extension of sources, from east and west, from south and north, but the market is still sensitive, and any year may see reserves inadequate. Indeed, the wonder is that prices of wheat are still so low. To some extent the explanation is to be found in the lowering of the standard of living in Europe, which has already been indicated as one of the factors determining the cultivated area required per person. The buying power of many populations in Europe is severely restricted. France, Italy and Belgium are at the present time compelled to reduce their demand for wheat by the adoption of "war bread." But there is obviously a limit to this process of "pulling in the belt."

It remains to ask to what extent can the demand for food by a growing population be met by an intensification of production on the existing cultivated area? Here we are faced with a new difficulty. Already agriculture is comparatively ill-rewarded, not only in this country and in the United States, but in nearly all countries where it is not artificially sustained by a system of protection. Men are leaving agriculture wherever new opportunities offer. Even in France, with its secular tradition of attachment to the soil, the peasants are migrating to the towns,

and the French population now shows a majority of urban dwellers. Wherever manufacturing industries penetrate-and the improvement of communications itself is equivalent to penetration-they tend to draw both men and capital away from the land. Agriculture does not—and at the present scale of prices cannot-offer the same returns as are offered by other occupations.

In Great Britain farming is mainly an organized business demanding capital and employing labour. But the large-scale capitalist refuses to have anything to do with agriculture, except as a hobby. Joint stock enterprises, which provide the capital for most manufacturing industries, do not exist in agriculture, and the farmer often finds it hard to obtain the capital he needs. Simultaneously, our agricultural labourers are the worst paid body of skilled workmen in the community: their wages, after all allowance is made for the conditions of life, compare unfavourably with those of any other group of workers. If not actively discontented, they are very conscious of their relative position; they leave the land themselves if any opportunity offers, and nearly always endeavour to find some other occupation for their children. If we turn to the peasant cultivators of the continent of Europe or the singleman farmers of the newer countries, by whom the greater part of the world's farming is conducted, we find the same causes in operation. Everywhere the tillers of the soil are becoming less inclined to remain on the land, if they can obtain the alternative of factory conditions, with fixed hours and cash wages.

It may be argued that this flight from the land must right itself under the pressure of population; and, possibly, despite the unremunerative nature of the occupation, we might trust for our food to the continued growth of a peasant population faithful to the land if only fresh land were available. But, if we have to resort to intensification of production to meet the world's need for food, we must take this growing disinclination to agricultural work into account, because intensification involves a greater expenditure of labour per unit produced. It is here that the danger of the situation lies: the coincidence of a shortage in new land available for settlement with the withdrawal of men and capital from farming. The growth of population will slow down under the operation of self-imposed checks, and if this factor alone were in operation there is probably margin enough of land open to enable intensification to take effect before any serious

scarcity becomes manifest. But if another tendency is at the same time working against the remedy of intensification, the risk of a crisis becomes greater and even acute.

Space hardly permits the entry upon a discussion of how intensification is to be secured. The peasant population will certainly follow upon that path but slowly; advances will be made most rapidly where farming is organized as a capitalistic industry. Capital has to be attracted to the industry of food production; the worker has to be suitably remunerated, whether it be the organizer who directs the business or the labourer who gives his daily toil. The need is not so much for more men upon the land as for fewer men working at a higher level of efficiency.

At the present time there is little promise of any of these changes by which the necessary intensification can be brought about, until the stimulus of higher prices for agricultural produce makes itself felt. It may be thought that a rise in the price of such a fundamental article as food will only add to the cost of labour and the difficulties of production, but what is needed before we can make a start on better methods is the restoration of a proper parity between the return for growing food and that obtained for making other commodities.

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To summarise the argument :-The white population of the world is still increasing rapidly, though the rate of increase is somewhat diminishing. In the last century room was provided for an increasing white population by the settlement of the Americas and of other fertile but uncultivated lands. land is not in sight to meet the continued increase of population. The existing ratio between land and population, about two and a-half acres per person, may be modified either by a lower standard of living or a higher level of cultivation. The white peoples will not permanently accept the former alternative; industrial competition makes the latter more difficult. Intensification will not begin except under the stimulus of higher prices and a return for agriculture commensurate to that obtainable in urban industries.

A. D. HALL

THE IMPERIAL CONFERENCE

Survey of Overseas Markets by the Committee on Industry and Trade. H. M. Stationery Office. 1925.

THE HE Imperial Conference which meets during the present month will help, it is to be hoped, to direct public attention to many of the important problems of empire. Most of these problems are not new. They have been with us since England began empire building in the days of the Tudors. We therefore need not feel particularly disappointed if the present conference, like its predecessors, leaves matters much where they were before.

At the back of all the imperial problems that come up for discussion again and again is the overmastering fact that the Mother Country and the colonies, or Dominions, necessarily approach most questions from a different angle. In the earlier days of the great empire now grouped under the British flag, the Mother Country quite naturally looked upon the colonies as her possessions, to be ruled by her and for her benefit. Acting under the guidance of this conception, England throughout the eighteenth century, and for a large part of the nineteenth century, insisted that the trade of the colonies must, in the main, be limited to direct commerce with the Mother Country.

This limitation was not quite so unfair as it sounds. The English Plantations in North America, which in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were the most important of our colonies, were isolated settlements dependent on England's sea-power for their protection. On that score alone it was reasonable to ask them to sacrifice some of their interests to those of the Mother Country. In addition they received some economic compensation. International trade at that period was hampered by barriers that would make the eyes of the modern protectionist glisten with envy. Not only were tariffs high, but in multitudes of cases there were absolute prohibitions. Consequently the Plantations, with a protected market in the Motherland, were probably in the main better off than if they had been left to find

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markets for themselves in foreign countries. At any rate, no special blame attaches to England for her colonial policy at that period, for it was the recognised policy of all the European nations which were then eagerly competing for possessions in the new world.

Of necessity, however, the enforcement of such a policy frequently conflicted with the commercial interests of colonial producers, and tended to create ill feeling. As the colonies expanded, their desire for greater freedom naturally became more pronounced, and it is doubtful, so far as the American Plantations were concerned, whether the old colonial system would have lasted as long as it did but for the fear of France. The capture of Quebec removed that fear. The settlers in New England, Virginia, and the other American Plantations, no longer dreading a French invasion from the north, felt they could afford to snap their fingers at the Mother Country. And they did. When she quite reasonably asked that they should make some contribution to the enormous costs she had incurred to prevent France from occupying the backbone of the American continent, they refused to pay anything; and when she tried to squeeze a little bit out of them by taxing imported tea, they threw the tea into the water of Boston Harbour, and the War of Independence began.*

The loss of the American colonies was followed a few years later by the outbreak of the long struggle with Napoleon. With the ending of that struggle, England found herself in a position of unparalleled supremacy abroad and grave industrial distress at home. For many years her domestic problems were the most serious she had to face. The colonies were undeveloped and, as factors in the trade of the Mother Country, they were relatively unimportant. In the middle of the nineteenth century a good many of our prominent statesmen-including Disraelit-regarded the colonies as an incubus rather than as an asset. Earl Grey, in his book on "Colonial Policy," published in 1853, expressed dissent from this view, and contended that Great Britain gained by

*The main facts that led up to the American Declaration of Independence are well set forth in an article in the EDINBURGH REVIEW for July, 1926, by Professor Alison Phillips, who shows how grossly the conduct of Great Britain is misrepresented in American histories.

+Writing in 1852, Disraeli said: "These wretched colonies will all be independent in a few years, and are a millstone round our necks."

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