RURAL ECONOMY

Evening Post, Volume CXVIII, Issue 9, 11 July 1934, Page 12

RURAL ECONOMY

BRITAIN'S NEW POLICY

DRIVE TO PRODUCTION

IMPROVEMENT ALREADY

MR. ELLIOT'S REVIEW

. (British Official Wireless.) (Received July 11, 2 p.m.)

RUGBY, July 10. A comprehensive review of agriculture and the position in its various branches was given by Mr. Walter Elliot, Minister of Agriculture, during the debate on the Estimates in the House of Commons last night. In concluding his survey, he said that the drive towards home production that was taking place in every country was the inevitable result of the greater amount of learning of the machine age which was bringing about a more self-contained policy.

On a general review, he said, they could at any rate-see signs of a turn of the tide. The index price snowed an improvement since 1933, having risen in six months from 107 to 111. Wages had begun to benefit, and in the last eighteen months there had been an im-l provement in working conditions, either for hours or wages, of 300,000 agricultural workers. Tho agricultural industry, which had lost £85,000,000 of capital and £30,000,000 in income, could not at present return the. same amount] as formerly to any of those engaged in it, but a start had been made, and he put forward the Government's agricultural, policy as the beginnings •of an effort to improve and strengthen what was still the greatest industry in the country.