Evening star., 1934-11-04
BY LOUIS Nj. LYONS.

ISCSDL OeUdl III 4NcW IL
is the same equalization, pooling the
market among all producers alike,
taking a special advantage away from
some in order to give all living.
But the British marketing control
goes farther than the A. A. A. milk
licenses. 1t names the price right
through to the retail customer.
England has her Consumers Com
mittee, too, whose duty. similar to the
New Deals Consumers Council, is
ito consider the effect of any market
ing scheme on consumers and :.
any consumers complaints" A plea
for higher prices, more direct than
any New Dealer has made here, was
addressed by the British minister of
agriculture to the English housewife:
You have got to keep agriculture
going 1t is no use buying a thing
cheaply and then 60 home and find
you have put your man on the dole
through doing it,"
Trend Back to Farm.
The farm and labor relationship is
relatively easy to demonstrate in
close-knit land like England. British
industrial workers have found the
unemployed lines clogged by 100000
farm laborers who have trekked to
town over 10-year period. BY 1888
this trend has been turned. Agricul-
tural workers increased from 100000
in 1882 to $4,000 last year.
Agriculture stands as the third
largest British industry. England has
more men in farming than any of her
dominions. On a land area a third
as large as Texas she raises food for
100000 people, or half her popu-
lation. This intensive farming uses
more labor than the same production
Mn America. This both adds to the
problem and aids the solution, if it
has to be political solution.
4 The minister of agriculture has ex-
blamed: We realized there was no
. solution in lowering production cost
If it meant destroying consumer
power. So we started at bottom with
the farm hands and planned that
county boards should be set up under
which wages we're kept at what the
best farmers were able to pay and not
the worst"
Thus propped up, Britain's farm
wages scarcely fell in 10 years of her
worst farm depression, and since 1888
they have shown rise.
Prevents Collapse.
The government stepped in to pre-
vent a threatened collapse of British
agriculture in 1881 with system of
marketing schemes. Each farm in
dustry was induced to organize its
own marketing program in accordance
with government outlines. The big
gest of these-the bacon marketing
scheme-was preceded by reorgan-
ization commission which determined
how many pounds year the British
bacon market could use and prescribed
the necessary regulation to preserve
prices.
The marketing boards based hog
prices on the cost of hog feed and
supervised contracts with the packers
to see that bacon prices met produc-
ton costs. Between the Fall Of 1882
and the Summer of 1888 the price of
bacon advanced from $3.50 to SIT 40.
incidentally, this helped hog prices
all over the world, because England is
the world bacon market. Ninety-six
per cent of world export bacon goes to
Britain.
Her position as an importing coun-
try has made England's farm problem
much simpler than Henry Wallace's.
She has been able to practice most of
her production control at the expense
of foreign producers. Her bacon prices,
for example, are held up by limiting
bacon imports to that part of the
demand which the home producers do
not supply. That England has aban-
doned her free trade tradition and is
using tariffs to protect her farmers
suggests how far she has gone from
the policy of letting nature take her
course.
g She has vigorously reduced her pro-
portion of imported foodstuffs from so
per cent last year to so per cent this
year. Britain goes Americans recip-
rocal tariffs one better with hard and
fast trade pacts, and she has not
hesitated to clamp on import quotas
to exclude what her own farmers need
to sell.
US. Direct Subsidies.
But Britain has her direct subsi-
dies, too. A processing tax on millers
gave the British farmer last year a
price so per cent above the world price
on wheat. This grant was figured at
enough to yield him cost of produc-
ton. Typical of her surplus control is
England's potato scheme. The Potato
Board is authorized to regulate supply
to demand and "to prevent this sur
plus going on the market" The
surplus potatoes are literally screened
of the market. A sieve is prescribed
with meshes regulated to the size Of
the surplus. Potatoes that fail to go
through the graded holes cannot be
marketed. To enforce this, growers
are permitted to deal only with mer-
chants authorized by the board and
no merchant will be authorized who
buys potatoes which do not conform
to the regulations"
Withal Britain still has her sur
pluses, even as American agriculture
has. Beef raisers in particular have
been hard to help. The price of beef
has fallen IS per cent in three years.
The present Parliament has voted a
subsidy of SIS, 100000 for this season
to pay $2.25 hundredweight to pack
ers who buy the beef of Merrie Eng
land in preference to the beeves of
the Argentine. A tariff is expected
to follow. But the problem here is
more elusive than one of controlling
imports. For some reason Englishmen
aren't the stout beef eaters of old.
In the five years to 1882 consumption
of beef fell of from So to so pounds
per person in England. American ex-
perience makes one wonder if it Is
not a more variegated diet that has
hit the British beef market-if spin
ach and salads are not tightening up
the heavy roast beef and Yorkshire
pudding. kidney stew and veal pie