TO THE EDITOR .sx WHAT IS WRONG WITH .sx AGRICULTURE ?sx SIR .sx I think " Labourer's Wife " labours under a delusion , for there are scores of farms for sale and quite a few to lot ; also , the Government will tell her there are thousands of head of stock less and thousands of acres less cultivated .sx Now , why does she not try and get to the root of things and strive for a party who will try and make agriculture a success so that all farm workers ( farmers included ) will have a good living ?sx After all her husband is not compelled to work on a farm , and if he is so dissatisfied as his wife I should think his employer would be well rid of him .sx A NORTH DORSET FARMER .sx PREVENTING ROAD ACCIDENTS .sx SIR .sx The wise words of Captain Campbell are particularly opportune at the present time .sx It is only by insistently drawing attention to the slippery state of the highways that improvements will be effected .sx If one might offer a word of comment , however , it would be to the effect that however careful pedestrians might be no possible care on the part of the unfortunate pedestrian will prevent an accident if a skidding car makes an unexpected bee-line for the person on foot Is it not possible for local authorities to endeavour to make asphalt or other suitably-surfaced roads , with a tooth-like grip when such roads are repaired ?sx It seems to be useless to scatter gravel , sand , or even chippings on hard , shiny surfaces .sx Yours truly , .sx A LANCASTER SMITH .sx Arcot Orchards , Sidmouth .sx THE LAND BILL .sx SIR .sx In the noise being made by a section of agriculturists there is a danger of forgetting a little bit of history .sx About 20 years ago a small-holdings Act was passed to enable land workers to obtain a few acres of land .sx And some of us thought the millennium had come .sx But , unfortunately , the Act had to be administered by those who objected to small-holdings .sx Consequently it became a dead letter , and we know now that if that Act had been allowed to operate , and the land hunger had been satisfied , there would have been no unemployment problem to-day .sx There is another Land Bill before Parliament to-day , and again farmers are bitterly opposed to it and all it stands for .sx And the question arises , " Will access to the land become law , or will the land continue to be locked up and unculivated ?sx " We have thousands of acres of the finest land in the world standing idle .sx And thousands of willing workers barred from the land .sx And our food comes over the sea .sx And the cry goes up from the heart of every Englishman , " O Lord , how " .sx Yours truly .sx A SMALLHOLDER .sx THE TASK AHEAD .sx SIR .sx The Archbishop of Canterbury has made it clear to us that we must press forward as a united body with faith , hope , fellowship , and in a spirit of sacrifice , if we are to recover our former prosperity .sx Some people are blaming the wicked capitalists ( most of us are capitalists in a large or small degree ) for the reduction of wages that have been proposed in certain industries .sx Unfortunately it is a fact that a capitalist , whether he be the owner of a large mill or factory or of a small shop , can only pay out in wages , &c .sx , what his business can earn , and many of them are not only making no profits , but running their businesses , at a loss .sx Not a month passes but that some of the large firms in our chief industries ( by which we live ) , such as ship-building , coal , iron , steel , textiles , not only pass their dividends but show a Ioss on the year's working .sx Obviously , therefore , in the case of these firms , unless something is done and done quickly it will not be a question whether they will continue to pay the same rate of wages as at present , but whether they will be able to pay any wages at all .sx We owed our prosperity in the past and our high standard of living ( compared to other countries ) to the prosperity of our overseas trade , and we are dependent on this trade for our food , as we cannot produce sufficient food in this country to feed even half the present population of 46,000,000 .sx Our overseas customers take our manufactured goods and send us in exchange the food and raw materials without which we could not exist .sx In the past this process of exchange prospered because we could supply the best and cheapest goods in the world ; it is not prospering to-day because although our goods are still the best they are too dear , with the result that our overseas customers are buying less from us and more from those countries which can supply the goods cheaper than we can .sx If we do not wish to go under we have got to compete with the workers of other countries in the markets of the world as we used to do in the past , and this we cannot hope to do unless we have faith and hope and unIess we all pull .sx together in a spirit of sacrifice .sx Yours faithfully , .sx G. C. LYLE .sx Captain ( retired ) Army and Navy Club .sx Pall Mall , London .sx SAFEGUARDING AND THE GLOVE .sx INDUSTRY .sx SIR .sx To deal adequately with the tortuous reasoning by which your correspondent , Mr. P. Heffer arrives at the conclusion that the admitted success of the glove industry under Safeguarding ( or , for that matter , of any other Safeguarded industry ) has been gained at the expense of the community would take more space than you are likely to grant me .sx I will content myself , therefore , with one paragraph upon which the whole of Mr. Heffer's adroit argument appears to be based .sx This is the paragraph ; it concerns fabric gloves :sx - .sx " The nett duty paid was 247,416 , but that does not represent all the cost to glove wearers .sx The Joint Industrial Council of the industry declare that the retail price of gloves is 75 per cent , above the manufacturers' lists and as those that handle foreign gloves are not likely to be content with a less profit than those that handled home-made gloves , the 78 per cent .sx has to be added , bringing the figure to 482,978 .sx " All this is very obscure a typical sample of Free ( ?sx ) Trade figure juggling .sx Whatever it may mean to the initiated , to many it cannot fail to convoy the impression that , as a result of the import duties , gloves have gone up 75 per cent .sx in price and the consumer has been mulcted in a sum of nearly half a million pounds .sx However , in all its ( possibly unintentional ) obscurity , let us take the paragraph as it stands .sx Mr. Heffer apparently would have us believe that the duty of 247,416 represents ( 1 ) a sum lost to the community at large , and ( 2 ) an added cost to glove wearers .sx On the contrary , however , far from being lost to the community , the whole sum has gone into the nation's purse in the form of revenue .sx And , moreover , much of this sum has been a definite gain to the nation :sx for as is evidenced by price tendencies , a considerable proportion of it has come out of foreigner's pocket in his endeavour to maintain his hold on the British market against the increased home competition fostered by Safeguarding .sx As to the suggestion that the duty has increased the cost to the consumer , the best reply is that given by the President of the Board of Trade ( see Parliamentary Debates , April 4th , 1930 ) to the effect that the wholesale prices of representative samples of gloves show a fall ranging from 0 to 17 per cent .sx in 1929 as compared with 1924 ( when the industry was not safeguarded) .sx It is difficult to understand what , Mr. Heffer means by the retail price being " 75 per cent .sx above manufacturers' lists .sx " If he means that the price to the consumer has been raised by any such amount his contention is finally and definitely answered by the official Board of Trade quotation given above .sx If , however , this is not what Mr. Heffer means to convey , perhaps he will make clearer what he does mean .sx In its present form the reference is , as Lord Dundreary would have put it .sx " a thing no fellah can understand .sx " If Mr. Heffer is not just an interested advocate of foreign interests and is sincere in his belief that an extension of Safeguarding would be to the detriment of this country , possibly he may be prevailed upon at the same time to answer the following questions :sx ( 1 ) What is there peculiar in this country that should make it to her benefit , alone of all the industrial nations of the world , to admit to her home market free of all tax the manufactures of her competitors , when there is no single foreign market of any importance into which she can send her own manufactures without paying a tax ?sx ( 2 ) Why should it be to the benefit of the British worker to admit freely into this country goods made at wage rates so low , and under conditions so bad , that our trade unions would not for one moment tolerate them here ?sx ( 3 ) Does Mr. Heffer consider that it would be .sx to the benefit of British trade that world tariffs should be lowered ?sx ( 4 ) If so , how does he propose to achieve this without some form of British tariff with which .sx to bargain toward this end ?sx If Mr. Heffer can answer these simple , straightforward questions in a way that will bear five minutes logical examination he will do much more useful work for the community at large than he will achieve by whole screeds of statistic-juggling and ( although this , of course , is only of infinitesimal importance ) he will succeed in converting to his point of view one humble citizen .sx - Yours faithfully A. GORDON MACLEOD .sx Elmcroft .sx Gillingham , Dorset .sx SIR .sx In your issue of the 9th Mr. Percy Hole Heffer accuses me of impropriety on the grounds that in my capacity as Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade , on the 20th March 1929 , I used the last quarter of 1925 as by base period for a comparison of employment in the glove industry before and after Safeguarding .sx I did not select that period ; I was answering a question by Sir Basil Peto , who asked me for the production during that period , and also for the corresponding quarter of 1928 .sx Nevertheless , I realise that had there been any justification in objecting to that period , I should have regarded it as my duty to insert in my reply the necessary qualifications .sx As a matter of fact Sir Basil Peto was perfectly in order in selecting that period , because as one representing a constituency in which gloves are made , he was presumably aware that the figures of employment for earlier periods were not based on quite the same date and , therefore , were not , strictly speaking , so comparative .sx On the other hand in the report of the Joint Industrial Council for 1929 , page 7 , the figures are given based on information drawn from a smaller portion of the trade for the years 1924-1925 which , when the adjustments are made for the different proportions represented , indicate that the figures for the last quarter were substantially representative .sx Mr. Heffer then proceeds to deal with the price question and without proof makes the statement that the duty was added to the price , and then proceeds to say that as retail prices in general showed a certain percentage advance on wholesale prices , then , accordingly , the burden on the consumer was greater than the net duty by this percentage .sx As his original assumption is untrue , the rest of his statement is of no importance .sx If Mr. Heffer would make enquiries in trade circles he would find that with the exception of those specialities which were not made in this country , prices to the consumer have not advanced , and as a matter of fact glove prices as a whole have declined in the same proportion as the general decline in prices of all manufactured goods in recent years .sx