Well, since we left the land in the hope that the factories would feed us better, why not go back to the land if the factories fail to feed us at all? Ah! but the commercial school have another string to their bow: "You cannot go back to the land, for it will not feed you all. This country will not produce enough food for its people to live upon." So the position in which the workers are placed, according to the commercial school, is this: You cannot produce your own food; therefore you must buy it by export trade. But you will lose your export trade unless you work for lower wages. Well, Mr. Smith, I for one do not believe those things. I believe-- 1. That we can produce most of our food. 2. That we can keep as much of our trade as we need, and 3. That we can keep the trade without reducing the wages of the workers. In my next chapter I will deal with the question of foreign trade and the workers' wages. We will then go on to consider the question of the food supply. For the argument as to our defencelessness in time of war through the inevitable rise in the price of corn, I am indebted to a pamphlet by Captain Stewart L. Murray of the Gordon Highlanders. I strongly recommend all working men and women to read that pamphlet. It is entitled _Our Food Supply in Time of War_, and can be ordered through the _Clarion_. The price is 6d. CHAPTER XI HOW TO KEEP FOREIGN TRADE The problem is how to keep our foreign export trade. We are told that unless we can compete in price with foreign nations we must lose our foreign trade; and we are told that the only means of competing with foreign nations in price is to lower the wages of the British worker. We will test these statements by looking into the conditions of one of our great industries, an industry upon which many other industries more or less depend: I mean the coal trade. At the time of the great coal strike the colliers were asked to accept a reduction of wages because their employers could not get the price they were asking for coal. The colliers refused, and demanded a "living wage." And they were severely censured by the Press for their "selfishness" in "keeping up the price of coal," and thereby preventing other trades, in which coal was largely used, from earning a living. They were reproached also with keeping the price of coal so high that the poor could not afford fires. Now, if those other trades which used coal, as the iron and the cotton trades, could not carry on their business with coal at the price it was then at, and if those trades had no other ways and means of reducing expenses, and if the only factor in the price of coal had been the wages of the collier, there might have been some ground for the arguments of the Press against the colliers. But in the iron trade one item of the cost of production is the _royalty_ on the iron. Royalty is a kind of rent paid to the landlord for getting the iron from his land.