and influence of which it should seek to strengthen—it must set 
itself to improve the financial and commercial organisation of 
the industry, with the defects of which farmers, however capable, 
cannot cope unaided. It must ensure, as has long been done 
in France and Germany, that both short and long term credit and 
facilities for insurance are easily available, must encourage the 
development of machinery for grading and collective marketing, both 
wholesale and retail, must secure that the farmer has at his disposal 
as efficient a service of transport and electrical power as are available 
for the manufacturer, and must introduce stability into the prices of 
meat and grain by the collective purchase of imported food stuffs. 
The Stabilisation of Prices 
The last point is one of fundamental importance. Under existing 
conditions, in which—to give one example—60 per cent. of the meat 
consumed in Great Britain is imported, the price of home-grown supplies 
is largely governed by the price of foreign meat, and this in turn is 
affected by influences which are necessarily outside the control of the 
producers in this country. The result too often is that farming is turned 
into a gamble in which the dice are loaded against the British producer, 
that enterprise is discouraged because it is at the mercy of 
unpredictable risks, and that the producer is distracted from bis 
proper task of organising production by the necessity of attempting 
to follow the course of constantly changing markets. “Fluctuations 
in prices,” the Prime Minister of Australia has observed, ‘‘benefit only 
the speculative middlemen.’ The Labour Party's policy is designed to 
bring them under control in the interests alike of producers and 
consumers. It would transform the import of meat into a public 
service, and would vest the responsibility for it in the hands of an 
Import Board composed of expert directors appointed by the Ministry 
of Agriculture or the Board of Trade, and charged with the duty of 
organising in the most efficient and economical manner the business of 
purchasing, distributing and transporting the whole import of meat. 
Since it would operate upon a large scale, the Board would eliminate 
many of the unnecessary charges with which both producers and 
consumers are burdened to-day. As it would have all imported supplies 
ander its control, it would be in a position to smooth out the fluctuations 
in prices which disorganise the business of agriculture, would secure 
the farmer a stable market in which to sell his produce, and bring 
corresponding advantages to the general body of consumers. 
The Agricultural Workers’ Charter 
The Labour Party does not forget that in England the most impor- 
tant section of the rural population consists to-day of agriculturat wage- 
earners, and that no advance in the standard of rural life is possible unless 
# revolution for the better is effected in thelr conditions. It is primarily, 
indeed, as a means for raising the status and increasing the prosperity of 
the agricultural worker that the improvement of the productive and 
commercial organisation of the industry is indispensable. Hitherto, he 
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