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THE NEW PROTECTIONISM

consumer (including the manufacture in the numerous food-making industries), the nation is virtually put on rations. And this not as a temporary war but as a permanent peace measure!

In a parenthetic paragraph Sir Leo expresses his belief that it would be "wise and profitable" for the State to acquire by purchase the whole of our agricultural lands. Indeed, it is tolerably obvious that, unless this step were taken, the bulk of the bounty money paid by the State for high-priced agricultural produce would pass into the hands of landlords in raised rents.

But surely it is a reductio ad absurdum of the "bounty" system when it is seen to require for its defence the nationalization of land and the socialization of the entire food trade of the country. For Socialists have generally and rightly recognized that agriculture is the branch of industry least adapted for direct State administration, by reason of the infinite variety of local conditions and the other irregularities of

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