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put more of our land into effective use, so increasing the proportion of our home supply. Some of the difficulties raised by the bounty policy, as usually advocated, are met by the more audacious scheme outlined by Sir Leo,[1] who would make his bounties an instrument of a general organization of our agriculture by the State. The comparative failure of the rising price of wheat in recent years to stimulate an increase of the acreage under wheat is doubtless attributable partly to the slowness of the agricultural mind to respond to economic stimuli, partly to the insecurity of tenure of most farmers, partly to the fact that other food prices have also risen, and last, not least, to the fact that the gain from higher prices is liable to be taken by landowners in higher rent. If anything effective is to be done along these lines, agriculture as a whole must be brought under a general State surveillance; there must be security for the maintenance of the higher profits of farming;
- ↑ Westminster Gazette, May 31, 1916.