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be as simple as this diagrammatic arithmetic, but the principle holds.) Some selection for priority is unavoidable; but such levy and bonus arrangements as these would throw a great strain on the scheme, especially where a producer had been enabled to take a high priority by the grant of an official loan. Further, if the Government, to give the scheme a good send-off, should undertake to pay the bonus for the first few years, most of the public money so spent would fall as a reward to owners who, in earlier years, had for their own reasons cleaned up their herds, and would give little or no return in the shape of bringing new men into the scheme. In these circumstances it may be well to consider the alternative of paying the bonus only from (say) a year after the opening of the list of supervised herds, and continuing it for a fixed number of years from the date of the "accepted certificate of each herd. Putting the number at ten years, the result would be that the total of levy or bonus would never rise much above £3,000,000, and for ten years after eradication was complete a diminishing number of farmers would continue to draw bonus, the levy decreasing as gradually as it grew at first.
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reactor loans, those who On the figures above assumed for borrowed the full amount per cow would assign the first four years of bonus to the extinction of the loans and enjoy the £2 10s. Od. Those who used their own per cow for six years £15 in all. capital instead of borrowing, would replace it and also receive £15 per cow.
From the evidence given before us, I have gathered that one of the chief reasons that in the farmer's mind weigh against undertaking eradication is the risk that, owing to some casual re-infection, four years of effort may leave him in a position to begin all over again; and, with no time limit in the levy and bonus scheme, he would not only have the continued expense of replacing reactors to meet, but also see his years of recoupment vanishing. To remove the re-infection risk a scheme had been suggested to us, before the advent of the Milk Marketing Board made a levy possible, under which the farmer in return for a fixed number of annual payments into a mutual insurance fund, would be guaranteed assistance out of the fund for replacing reactors as long as might be unavoidably necessary, the scheme when eradication was practically complete being transformed into a scheme of insurance against the re-infection risk, at a small continuing premium. The desirability of a permanent scheme of this latter kind should still be borne in mind.
In this question of inducements, it is essential to be not only definite but also liberal enough to bring into the voluntary scheme so large a majority of herd owners that compulsion, if and when the question should arise, would apply only to a small minority of recalcitrants. It would be very easy to spend large sums in eradica- tion and yet fail to attain the objective, in consequence of some relatively small but injudicious parsimony. Any idea in the farmer's
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mind that, by hanging back, better terms for joining the scheme might be exacted, would have deplorable effects.
(5) Incidence as between private and public purses.
The farming industry pays the initial costs of eradication, other than staff and incidentals, restoring the capital sum to the farmer who uses his own resources, or to the source from which he borrows, out of the bonus provided ultimately to all by means of a levy on all. (The inequalities between individuals to which this might give rise are dealt with under (4).) When the levy and bonus have ceased, the farmer is left with the net gain (d. per gallon, or £2,000,000 in all) arising under paragraph 13 of the report, unless the Milk Marketing Boards fail to prevent its diversion to the dairyman (or even the consumer) in the annual settlement of prices.
Except for a small increase of the Ministry of Agriculture staff for the direction of the eradication scheme, and the cost of providing the "revolving fund of perhaps £2,000,000 (on my rough assumptions) for a period of years, which might fall primarily on the Exchequer, the other costs both of eradication and of the new staff for clinical inspection, and later for other duties connected with diseases, fall primarily on county funds. Tempting as it may be to think that some portion of all this expenditure might properly be made to fall on the private purse of the consumer, it must be remembered that nothing can prevent him from opposing to higher prices his ultimate retort of restricting his purchases, with serious results to the dairy industry as a whole.
Unless it be the general plea of hard times for farming, I see no reason why the farmer should be rewarded by a permanent increase of income, large in aggregate amount, as a reward for making his product safe for human consumption, while the rate- payer continued to pay large sums; but the real amount of this increase and the extent to which the farmer should retain it, require to be examined and decided on grounds outside the province of the committee.
(6) Incidence as between different ratepayers and the taxpayer.
Whatever may be the fair total to levy on ratepayers as a whole in this connection, it requires special re-allocation between different localities, not only because the dense human populations that create high rateable values do not share ground with the dense cow populations that require veterinary attention, but also because from the point of view of the counties much of the expenditure represents costs of producing milk for vast numbers of absentee consumers whose rateable values bring nothing into the county exchequers concerned. This fresh expenditure was not provided for in the recent general 'block" settlement with the counties, and without an equitable re-adjustment such as will secure the zeal of the local authorities, on whom the scheme depends for the executive work of the campaign, its success will be endangered. If such a re-adjustment can
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