A.—s

380

Mr. DEAKIN : Are you going to confine yourself to wheat ? You take wheat as the typical food. You are not going to deai any further with food ? Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : I am not going to touch food again. Mr. DEAKIN : Are you going to touch rent '( Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : In what way I Mr. DEAKIN : You compare the cost of food in Germany. Is there a comparison of the cost of rent in Germany I Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : That is exactly what 1 am making a study of at the present moment. 1 have three investigators in Germany who are looking into this question of rent, wages, and employment. Mr. DEAKIN : Steadiness of employment is a very important factor. Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : lam looking into this. 1 have no right to say what the opinions of my investigators are, but there are three absolutely impartial investigators, chosen for the express purpose of getting these facts; and some of these facts, I do not mind saying now, as to the growth of German prosperity, are very startling, and they will all be published without the slightest consideration as to whether they will affect tlie fiscal argument one way or the other. Mr. DEAKIN : What you have said we understand so far as it asserts a high price of labour in Great Britain when compared with the Continent. Then, while alluding to your food, you draw attention to the fact that a large proportion of the population are steeped in poverty. They cannot be engaged in the well-paid trades, but in some other business or want of business ? Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : That is a very important problem, and I am sorry to say that this is not the only country where you get a population of that kind. As you know perfectly well, in every old country you get these men who are hanging on the outskirts of society, as it were, and very often they have no regular work to do. It is often due to the fact that they have no physical stamina that enables them to enter into the conflict. In new countries like yours, first of all the men who emigrate there are men of some stamina before they cross the ocean; and stock counts in these matters. Mr. DEAKIN : That is why we want a British stock all the time. Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : I agree, and I should be very glad if emigration could be encouraged to these new countries, but here in the old countries you have these people who form almost a separate race, and they go on from generation to generation until they die out. Mr. DEAKIN : Do they die out ? Mr. LLOYD GEORGE : They do in about the third or fourth generation in a city like this, but I am sorry to say that through economic conditions and the keenness of the conflict this great army of people is constantly being recruited.

Eleventh Day. 6 May 1907.

Preferenll w. Trade.