Page:The New Protectionism.djvu/117

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THE CASE OF AGRICULTURE
93

ment should not act similarly, or alternatively admit such foreign produce at some moderate rate of duty."

In order, therefore, to meet the obvious defects of an ordinary bounty scheme, it is proposed to establish a State monopoly in the supply of food. A State department is apparently to supersede all the present regulative motives of supply and of demand, fixing the quantity of all the different sorts of uses to which our land is to be put, and the quantity of "surpluses" of various kinds to be bought, first, from our different Dominions, and, secondly, from different foreign countries; finally it is to control an intricate machinery of distribution in order to supply to every consumer in the country the State rations which it has been calculated he ought to be allowed to buy and to consume. For if the State organizes the supply of foods, fixing the prices it pays to the home, the colonial, and the foreign producer, and the quantities it buys from each, and fixing, on the other hand, the selling prices to the

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