have to be paid by the steadfastly loyal sections of the population. It is unfortunately not in South Africa alone that the politician has shown indifference to the cost to the loyalists of his boasted policy of generosity.

It is no simulated loyalty that has been expressed and exhibited in recent years by the natives within the Union, and particularly in connection with the Great War. They had learnt to trust the Great White Queen, her representatives and her successors. They have since heard of the changes that have come over the world, and of the freeing of nations and races from tyranny and oppression, and they not unnaturally contrast this progress with the treatment with which they are threatened. They do not understand the subtlety of the distinction by which, in the territories of Swaziland, Basutoland and British Bechuanaland, under the Imperial Government, the Great King's justice and protection continue, but within the Union their King is unable to help them. Naturally the advocates of oppression are quite shrewd enough to see how important it is that this contrast should cease, and that all these territories should as speedily as possible be swept into the Union, so that the Imperial influence-the voice of the Great King-may be eliminated from South Africa.

Their policy is perfectly clear and logical, but what is the mother country going to say about it? Are these territories a menace in any way to the peace of the Union, or are they the only parts of South Africa where the native feels assured of justice and fair treatment, although he has no vote to aid him? It is quite understandable that the Old Country is weary of this widespread responsibility, that she wants no more wars if they can by any possibility be avoided. Through this very war-weariness, she was almost stampeded by newspaper clamour into betraying her mandated trust for Iraq. But South Africa constitutes no new trust and responsibility. The whole problem arises because the Union of South Africa, to whom the mother country has granted the right to manage its own affairs, has, for the moment, fallen into the hands of a combination of political parties that is proposing to betray the principles on which the British Empire has been built up. Not content with betraying those principles within the area under their own government, the present rulers of the South African Union want the mother country to surrender to them the only parts of South Africa where she is still able to maintain English principles of liberty and fair play.

In Rhodesia, where the native has no political franchise, there are proposals at present for generous treatment of him in regard to land where he can acquire an individual title. That with security for justice, and the right to develop and improve his ability and his lot, are what he wants and claims far more than the vote.

Finally, what are their fellow members of the Empire, the working classes in the Old Country, going to say about the treatment of the dark-skinned worker by the representatives of the so-called Labour Party in South Africa?

The Labour Party in England has shown the keenest interest in the political rights of the native races in Egypt and in India. What are they going to say about the right to live and develop for the native in South Africa?

Mr. Baldwin's recent address to the Classical Association suggests thoughts that would help to lift the European in South Africa above the absorbing self-interest that obscures the wider and longer view that should make some of his present purposes seem petty and narrow. With the comparatively small numbers of Europeans in South Africa their power to governor misgovern this strategically important end of the continent, is entirely dependent on the relations of the great Powers of the world. The political fate of the country has been settled on two occasions, with an interval of a century between them, by the victory of England in a great war, and not by the smaller happenings in South Africa itself. The white man has not been nearly so long at the Cape as the Roman was in Britain, and great world developments may cause him to disappear, as thoroughly as the other, possibly before an overwhelming Eastern race. At any rate it is becoming that South Africans should conduct themselves with modesty towards their great protecting Power, and not lightly flout her influence and her traditions.

W. E. C. CLARKE

THE AGRICULTURAL PROBLEM

1. Royal Commission on Agriculture: Interim Report. Cmd. 473. 1919. Minutes of Evidence. Cmd. 345, 365, 391, 445 and 665. 1919-20.

2. Agricultural Tribunal of Investigation: Interim Report. 1923. Final Report. Cmd. 2145. 1924.

Cmd. 1842.

3. Departmental Committee on Distribution and Prices of Agricultural Produce. Interim and Final Reports. 1923-24.

4. Report of the Committee on Stabilisation of Agricultural Prices. Ministry of Agriculture: Economic Series, No. 2. 1925.

5. The Land and the Nation: Rural Report of the Liberal Land Committee. Hodder and Stoughton. 1925.

6. The Tenure of Agricultural Land. By C. S. ORWIN and W. R. PEEL. Cambridge University Press. 1925.

IT

T is perhaps a consequence of the English genius for extemporisation in practical matters that social and economic questions seldom receive much attention in this country, except when some immediately pressing difficulty has arisen; and then the temporary features of the problem which have induced its consideration necessarily seem larger and more important than they really are, and those features which are more permanent and ultimately of greater significance tend to escape public notice. In recent discussions about English agriculture this tendency has been much in evidence. The peculiar distresses of young farmers who started in business just after the war, when prices were at their highest, have led many to take an unduly gloomy view of the prospects of farming in general. The urgent war need for increased corn production has had the effect of making people speak of agriculture almost as if agriculture were synonymous with the growing of cereals. The post-war slump in prices has seemed to some to be the agricultural problem par excellence. Finally, the war-induced sales of agricultural land, which were such a startling factor in the farming world during the years immediately following the conclusion of hostilities, have brought the relations of landlord and tenant into particular prominence, and in Mr. Lloyd George's new land campaign everything is made to turn upon the conditions of land tenure.

No one who is familiar with the English countryside will deny that each of the difficulties which has emerged as a direct

VOL. 244 NO. 497.

D

or indirect result of the war has a real importance and, in some cases, an importance not limited to the years in which abnormal war-induced conditions are predominant. But, none the less, the circumstances of these post-war years are liable to make agricultural problems appear in a somewhat distorted perspective; and it may be useful to remind those who are interested in English farming of some of the more permanent and less obvious features of the situation. Those features are likely to reveal themselves if we think not so much of the conditions which distinguish agriculture to-day from the agriculture of 1870 or 1913 as of some of the essential differences between agriculture and other industries.

Farmers are fond of telling one that farming is different from other trades. But some of them have rather odd views as to the directions in which the difference is to be found. For example, the representative of the Yorkshire Union of Agricultural Clubs, in giving evidence before the Royal Commission of 1919, said: "The industry differs from any other by reason of our inability to pass on to the consumer the added cost of production, since the price of our produce is normally ruled by the world's market."* He was, apparently, quite oblivious of the fact that foreign competition affects other industries besides agriculture. Again, I seem to remember several farmer witnesses before the same Commission telling us with an air of wisdom that agriculture was not carried on under a roof and that this peculiarity made agriculture essentially different from other forms of business. They seemed to forget building, quarrying, fishing, and the repair of roads, as well as the large amount of railway work which has to be done in the open air. Or, to take another example, I would not mind wagering that if the question were put to any typical group of farmers, a majority of them would confidently affirm that agriculture is especially burdened with State regulations, though, of course, the fact is that more than one other trade is subject to a minimum wage-law, and there can be no doubt, as regards other forms of State interference, that the percentage of the farmers' costs which is due to this cause is far less than the corresponding percentage in the case of employers who come under the Factory Acts.

There are, however, certain features of agriculture—and

*See Cmd. 365, question 7133.

features of the greatest importance-which are either peculiar to it, or so much more normal and influential there than elsewhere, that they really do differentiate farming from most of the other great industries. And, in the first place, the fact that farming is a scattered industry, spread over the length and breadth of the land, combines with its dependence upon the seasons and upon the varieties of soil to produce consequences which are often almost entirely overlooked in the discussion of agricultural problems. These things mean that in the course of his daily life the farmer is hardly ever brought into contact with types of farming differing from those prevalent in his own district. The seasons in which he could learn most by inspecting farms in a distant county are the busy seasons, and then he is tied to his own fields. Thus the experience of the farmer is peculiarly lacking in the mental stimulus which is received from the survey of a great variety of practices. And from this one can argue to the somewhat novel conclusion that the farmer has more need than other business men of reading-of the "book-learning which he so often despises. After all, history suggests that there is nothing unpractical about this idea: the career of Arthur Young shows what books can do to improve farming, and we should remember that the characteristic method of Young was to describe the agriculture of district after district and hold up the practices of one county as an example to another. It can hardly be supposed that the farmers of the present day are less able to learn from books than those of the reign of George III. Besides, broadcast lectures on farming topics are now a possibility.

But if the isolation of farmers teaches the need for lectures and books, the variety of soils and climatic conditions makes the lessons of books hard to apply. The conclusions reached in the laboratory are not always, perhaps not often, true for all sorts of soil; nor will practices which succeed in one county necessarily be advantageous in another district. The farmer is not like a manufacturer who can use a patent or apply a chemical formula in his factory with the certainty that it will work there just as well as it has worked elsewhere. The farmer has the soil to reckon with, and in stock-raising he is dealing with living creatures who cannot be standardised, but have a certain individuality in their constitutions. In applying the conclusions of agricultural science to practical farming, a farmer is really in the position of a