The Birmingham age-herald., 1924-02-13

1 rating, not necessarily agricultural rat ing, but the whole. question of rating Government after government has prom ised and has tried to deal with this question, but has failed to do so. Tn, labor government is going to make ar attempt. It proposes to bend its at ention the subject, and it hopes that with fair amount of luck, before i, will be time to leave these benches anG either cross the house or go to thu country, it will have produced itl scheme for the readjustment and reform of rating. And no industry will bene fit more from a scientific system thar the farmer who is farming his land ana is not going to be charged with ratet for improvements upon it. $.
 "So far as we are concerned we shall not touch tariffs or bounties. They only help to encourage inefficiency. They in. duce the towns to regard agriculture as something that presses upon them They cannot be confined to agricultural produce alone, and bounties in particu lar must be accompanied. by an oppres. sive control, for no government in its senses would ever make large presents of public money to an industry and say you can carry on your work in any way you like. .
 "What agriculture requires is . stimulus to fight its own battles. The government, therefore, proposes to sup. port either by loans or by guarantees cooperative enterprise controlled by the agricultural community organized and directed mainly to dealing with agricultural produce to buying the raw materials, seed, manures, and so on to buying the implements of cultiva. tion; to the supply of markets and all those processes which are necessary to make agriculture a paying and a pros. porous concern.
 "The government is convinced that all extrenous aids to agriculture would only result in a further tendency to trust to the state instead of solving their own problems by applying their energy to it."
 Labor member interrupts with Good old individualism."
 Akin to Socialism
 Mcdonald: Well, if cooperative enterprise assisted by state credit is a form of individualism, it is an in. dividualism hardly distinguishable from socialism. The government proposes to set up again wages boards for agricul- tural laborers. In some parts we are informed wages are again falling be. low tke twenty-five shillings minimum How any farmer can imagine he is going to get value from a laborer whose income in these times is under twenty | five shillings a week I do not under stand. There is nothing more uneco- nomical, even on bad land, than sweated labor. By re-establishing the wages boards we shall create stimulus which instead of doing harm to the | farmer will compel him to use more efficient expedients than hitherto in order to make good use of his labor and good use of his land. The whole point is this, that until we get the farming community stimulated to organize it. self to function as it has done in Deag mark for instance, nothing is going to be a real substantial benefit to the farmer himself.
 Foreign Affairs
 In regard to foreign affairs I must explain to the House that I had tC consider whether or not I should take the foreign office. The thing that
 
 Foreign affairs-the relation of this country to Europe and the position O, this country in Europe-had become SC unsatisfactory that I believe it would have been a great advantage that who ever was prime minister should also b, foreign secretary in order to give tn, weight of his office to any policy tha might be devised. I do not know if was rash or not. but in the end I de cided that for the time being, at any rate, until some of the preliminaries were cleared away and the prospect. got little bit better, to take the two offices on the clear understanding tha, as soon as l feel I can relieve myself of the one I shall do it. As foreign minister, recognized Russia with tht full approval of the government. The point of view I took was this: want to settle all between Russia and our selves-a very big job, certainly, but 6 job that somebody sooner or later has to do. l made up my mind if any for eign secretary sat down to try to set tie these questions with representativ. of Russia who was not even a charge d affairs, he might live to be as old a. Methusalah and he would not settl, them. -
 Some papers have said that tht soviet authorities took a long time tt accept. That is not true, and it is not fair. Within an hour of the receipt ot our message, message of the mos cordial character was on it's way tt the foreign office here. It was sent by wireless, whereas, Chicherin's letter wa. sent by post. That is the explanation propose to send to Moscow com plete statement of our outstanding diff faculties so far as we have them at the foreign office. The soviet govern ment has agreed to appoint Russian members to an Anglo-Russian commis sion to which will be referred all de tails. The sooner we-close the volum, of our Russian transactions the better
 "I propose to close that volume A, | quickly as possible and to oepn a new one in which hope there win be mor, amicable messages than in the las one."
 Col. John Ward interrupts. says Don't give them our money, that i. all"
 Mcdonald "Everything that is neces sary will come before the house of com mons. We are now engaging in settin, up this commission and the work vii be pushed ahead with the least possibl, delay. So much for Russia.
 Central Europe Situation
 When I went to the foreign offic, I was faced with a very serious situ ation in central Europe. Our relation, with France have been drifting ant were anything but pleasant There wa, a feeling of insecurity all round Ther, were unhappy scrambles for alliances One felt instinctively that unless som, change came we were going to get into hopeless condition which would onl, result in the fresh outbreak of a bi,