prey of every profiteering combination; and neither the Liberal nor the Conservative Party promises, in this respect, any amendment. This, too, is in no sense a ‘class’ measure. It is, so the Labour Party holds, just as much the function of Government, and just as necessary a part of the democratic regulation of industry, to safeguard the interests of the community as a whole, and those of all grades and sections of private consumers, in the matter of prices, as it is by the Factory and Trade Boards Acts, to protect the rights of the wage-earning producers in the matter of wages, hours of labour and sanitation.” Labour’s Agricultural Policy An official pamphlet called the _Labour Party and the Countryside_ states Labour’s agricultural policy “as settled by representatives of the Party’s 300,000 affiliated agricultural members.” With pride it is announced that members engaged in industry and living in towns had no finger in it. It is claimed to be the fruit of practical experience—the conclusion of experts. Endorsed by the National Executive of the Labour Party, it is stated to crystallize the principles upon which the Party will deal with agricultural and rural problems. The basis is to be the non-sectarian principle of “increased production of food stuffs by the employment of more British labour on better cultivated British land.” The Coalition Government is charged with repudiating this principle and with having perpetrated in 1921 a shameless and scandalous deceit in “scrapping” the Corn Production Acts, 1917 and 1920. Abolition of Landlordism First and foremost, land is to be nationalized. Many evils and much oppression are attributed to private ownership. Landlords have obstructed every measure of land reform; thwarted food production; obstructed housing, small holdings and land reclamation; demanded extortionate prices for land for public needs and appropriated as unearned increment a large part of the value of every tenant’s improvement. “For the Labour Party” therefore “the substitution of public for private ownership in land (subject to equitable treatment of each person whose property is required for the public good and to a proper security of tenure for the home and the homestead) underlies in principle all its specific proposals.” Councils for Agriculture