TIMELY TOPICS

Northern Advocate, 21 January 1936, Page 4

TIMELY TOPICS

AGRICULTURE IN BRITAIN. In a recent speech in which he surveyed the changed agricultural situation which he found on his return from New Zealand, Lord Bledisloe said that the most surprising in the transformation scene was the 'picture of the British farmer—the most individualistic of all human beings—complacently welcoming Government control as the only alternative to insolvency. Government control was an inevitable condition of Government protection. He was confident that the perpetuation of fiscal assistance to the farming community by successive British Governments would depend upon four main factors: maintenance of a reasonably high standard of quality both in farming and in farm products; (2) the availability of essential foods for the working population at a reasonable price; (3) fair, impartial, and unprejudiced treatment of all who put their capital or their labour in winning wealth from British soil; and (4) due consideration of the legitimate claims of our oversea dominions. ■ The first of these involved, in his judgment, the drastic vocational improvement, or else the entire elimination, of the “lame dogs” of the agricultural industry, who did no credit to British farming and who militated against the equitable treatment of their efficient colleagues by claiming from the general public a benefit which they did not merit. There were far too many duffers living on British soil today. The second involved the effective protection of both producer and consumer against excessive distributive profits, however efficient such distribution might be. The third implied a sound conception of the paramount importance to the whole body politic of confident development and improvement of agricultural land, even if some financial advantage accrues to those who undertook it; and the fourth was conditional upon a much more comprehensive and concurrent knowledge of British farming and of that of our overseas Empire than any British Government or Government Department had hitherto shown that it possessed.

«> <s> <g> Words of Wisdom. Nothing is so infectious as example and we never do any great good or any great ill which does not produce the like. —La Rochefoucauld. <S> <s> <$ Tale of the Day. Daughter (pleading for boy friend): “Daddy, dear, Henry is a young man who believes in combining business ivith pleasure.” Father: “I’d rather he were a young man who combined business with profit.”