te has been invoked in other
directions. Already the Government has assisted experimental cultivation of
beet in this country. The suggestion has been made that the State should
build two beet-sugar factories, which would cost about L200,000 each; in
this way it is suggested that our home supply of sugar would in the future
be assured, and that agriculture would benefit considerably.[4]

[Footnote 1: _Round Table_, Sept. 1914, p. 705.]

[Footnote 2: This was done through the Board of Agriculture for the War
Office. On the other hand, in the purchase of clothing, boots, blankets,
etc., the War Office approached the producers directly instead of through
the Board of Trade.]

[Footnote 3: It was reported in the Press on October 8, 1914, that the Home
Secretary had purchased 900,000 tons of sugar at about L20 per ton, the
transaction involving an outlay of about L18,000,000.]

[Footnote 4: See an article by Mr. Robertson Scott in _The Nineteenth
Century_, October 1914.]

Sir Charles Macara has put forward a scheme of State aid for the cotton
industry. Owing to the war, a third of the total cotton crop (usually taken
by the continental countries) was thrown on the market. Prices naturally
fell, and there was a danger that the cotton planters might not be able to
pay the debts they had contracted to enable them to grow their crops, in
which case there would be a likelihood of the land being used for other
saleable commodities, and the efforts which have been made in the past to
increase the cotton crop would be nullified. In the meantime, the surplus
cotton on the market created an uncertainty regarding prices, and buying
came to a standstill, with the result that the position of the industry as
a whole became very critical. The suggestion of Sir Charles Macara is
that the Governments of this country and the United States, acting in
conjunction, should take the temporarily unsaleable surplus of raw cotton
off the market and store it for use in years when the crop is short. In
other words, it is proposed to establish a permanent national cotton
reserve. It is estimated that the cost of the scheme would mean an outlay
of sixty to seventy millions sterling. If the plan were put into operation,
however, it is claimed that it would restore confidence, prevent the
wholesale stoppage of mills, and at the same time establish a cotton
reserve to counteract the fluctuations of crops in the future.[1] These
matters need but to be st