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OF

THE UNIVERSITY

OF CALIFORNIA

LOS ANGELES

THE STATE AS FARMER

GEORGE RADFORD,

M.A.

21-

CHEAP EDITION

LONDON :

THE LABOUR PUBLISHING COMPANY, LTD.,

6, TAVISTOCK SQUARE, W.C.

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THE STATE AS FARMER

NOTE

This little book is published as a supplement

to ' Our Land,' the serial issue of which is

suspended during the war

THE

STATE AS FARMER

OR

THE FUTURE OF AGRICULTURE
IN ENGLAND

BY

GEORGE RADFORD, M.A.

EDITOR OF ' OUR LAND '

. . . '• ••
LONDON

SMITH, ELDER & GO.

15 WATERLOO PLACE

1915

[All rights reserved.]

HI)

THE STATE AS FARMER

OR THE

FUTURE OF AGRICULTURE IN ENGLAND
CHAPTER I

Li

The result of the great war upon England as
a food-producing area has been remarkable

3 in its insignificance. Farming has caused a
feeling of irritation rather than anxiety, and

if attention has been directed to labour much

i more than to volume of supply. Efforts
have been made to apply more female labour
to agriculture ; and attempts, much less

: legitimate, to divert boys from school to
the fields have been by some vociferously
applauded and by others denounced. The
really important question of the national food
supply as affected by our home products
has been almost ignored by Cabinet, Parlia-
ment, and newspaper alike. It is a time-

B

7 1

2 THE STATE AS FARMER

honoured maxim that ' we must not swop
horses when we are crossing a stream ' ;
so this vital need, involving the country's
safety in certain circumstances, is not to be
considered in any radical sense by anyone
until the State has been saved for the time.
Can we afterwards keep the interest awake
long enough to get the pressing danger pro-
vided against once for all ?

The question has not been discussed in
the past largely because it is a commonplace
commercial matter. We know that we are
a nation of shopkeepers, and the instinct of
the class is to keep the land for certain
individualistic operations. It is a mistaken
view, but interests are involved which would
be incommoded, if not injured, should the
necessary changes be made. The war will, no
doubt, cause this simple factor of military risk
to be included in all future calculations. The
idea that it would pay us to keep our labourers
well fed in view of calls upon their strength,
never seems to have entered into the heads
of those who were concerned in this industry.
I think it has reached that centre of thought
now ; and when we preach the gospel of

THE STATE AS FARMER 3

sanitation and general well-being, the burning
memories of our present experience will in
all probability secure for us a more patient
hearing in the future.

The war has made even the most indifferent
among us feel that the nation is a single entity
precious to us all, and its safety and well-being
must be placed far above any purely personal
claims. The singleness of essential interest
coincides with the demands of commercial
judgment. The land cannot bring forth and
send into the market for the people its
maximum of produce unless it be treated as
a single national whole. During the war
some slight indication of national purpose
and patriotism has been given in cases where
the system of grazing, which gave greater
bulk of produce, has been adhered to instead
of the slightly more profitable practice of re-
duced expenditure and less weight in returns.
It requires but a nodding acquaintance with
agriculture to recognise that this reduction
in expenditure can be carried into an amazing
number of undertakings, till transport, labour,
and housing are so treated that population
dwindles, the amenities of life decay, and the

B 2

4 THE STATE AS FARMER

district treated to this policy of starvation
contributes little to the nation's wealth,
although those few denizens who direct its
policy keep adding something to their miserly
hoards.

All sorts of panaceas for the national soil
have been tried in recent years. Let me
glance at a few of them now ; there will be
much to say about them later. They are
good in themselves, but almost useless if left
to spasmodic choice. Agricultural colleges
and farm schools have been founded ; co-
operation of a limited kind is at work in
some districts ; co-partnership has been tried ;
small holdings can be secured within limits
under the National Act ; horses have had
large sums spent upon them, and we wonder
whether Germany and Austria or ourselves
have reaped the benefit ; research is being
carried out with great ability ; and, to crown
all, the Board of Agriculture is ever on the
watch to help. But where are we ? Every-
thing was dearer, even in peace, and more
difficult to get ; everyone still does only
what is right in his own eyes ; no one knows
whether he will be able to get a market for

THE STATE AS FARMER 5

his crops and stock when he has grown them,
for notices are being given freely that the
railways will not collect ; feudalism and the
commercial fraternity — an ill-omened con-
junction— are stronger than ever in their
grip upon the land. And yet it is to the
commercial solution in its true aspect that we
must turn if we want to change failure into
success. In other words, we must treat our
cornfields, orchards, and pastures as if they
were in the hands of one vast commercial
undertaking with orders to get all that is
possible out of them just as if they were
factories for munitions of war. At least this
is what I shall try to prove in the following
pages. I hope that I may deter no one, not
even ' the landed gentry ' themselves, from
considering the problem and its solution by
my manner of presenting them. There is
sufficient inertia in the subject itself to make
it a difficult one. It is but too true that
a party or a government only moves when
public opinion is behind it ; yet here it would
be like waiting for munitions until the in-
habitants of our almshouses had moved.
There is no person or class specially interested

6 THE STATE AS FARMER

in the true agricultural policy : the subject
is one which concerns the State as a whole
alone. There may be in it a better outlook
for our educated men and scientists ; there
will certainly be a more ample wage for those
who are employed in each portion of the work.
But, on the other hand, we shall find our
first difficulty to lie in the absence of skilled
workers, and delay and disappointment will
occur while we are getting together the various
staffs required. There are two classes among
the educated that will be needed here just as
there are in all such organised work. The
pure scientist will be wanted more than
ever, for we are only beginning to appreciate
the marvels that are in these common things
of life. And, in addition to the research
student who inquires into his partial sterilisa-
tion and the like, we need those chemists and
physicists who can call fortunes for us out of
the waste products of our industries. But
before we can afford to the highest grade
explorer a full field for his (or her) researches,
we need those practical scientists and or-
ganisers who will apply the things that are
already known to the land of the State as a

THE STATE AS FARMER 7

whole, and I fear that in this direction there
will be a shortage of men and women for some
years to come. In one particular we are in
a better position by far than when this subject
came first to be discussed. The advent of
the motor has relieved us from the chief
difficulty which lay before the organiser.
Transport need not present any obstacle now
to the due development of the most far-
reaching scheme ; vans and wagons of every
size, power, and shape will be forthcoming
promptly when needed at reasonable prices.
There is no longer a prohibitive charge for
these things in the matter of convenience and
efficiency, and time has thus been almost
annihilated by speed. The ideal motor for
each district and trade will soon be worked
out when the work itself begins.

In general we may consider that nature
itself lays down the rough sketch-map which
we have to use in deciding upon the kind
of farming which is applicable to a district.
Here is arable, here is pasture ; here are
woods, and here heather and sparse blades
of grass upon the cliffs. But it must be

8 THE STATE AS FARMER

a very remote and desolate region where a
cow will not afford her friendly help to the
scanty population, and where a few pigs
and fowls will not add interest and profit
to the hamlet. Sheep in many places give
the element of adventure to hard life upon
the hills. We may almost calculate, then,
upon the distribution of stock over the whole
of the British Isles ; and we may take it
that, if we could tap the more remote areas
by an adequate system of transport, we could
draw from them a very important addition
to our home food supply. Those who have
penetrated into our more secluded valleys
will have noted that they are just as well
able to send down their quota of milk and
eggs daily, their beef, mutton, and bacon at
regular intervals as other parts of the country.
In fact, the output from these regions might
be worked into a system even more pro-
ductive of these prime necessities than are
those convenient localities which send up
grapes and tomatoes to the more luxurious
markets. If there is one fact more notorious
than another in relation to agriculture, it is
that the response of the land to tillage and

THE STATE AS FARMER 9

generous treatment is equally generous, even
unstinting, and that if we want more produce
from a farm we have only to put more labour
and nutriment into it. In the case of stock,
the land will carry more or less in proportion
to the direct encouragement it receives from
fertilisers and the indirect benefit it gets
from the stock itself. There again the feeding
of stock affects the result, and thus we
promptly come face to face with the need
for a little arable beside the grass. There
are few streams in England that do not
flow by a suitable acreage for such grain-
crops and turnips as will help the cattle to
be well fed. The straw, too, is good for
food, and what is not can at least help the
heather to supply bedding and then return
to the land as manure. There are none of
these points now crudely mentioned that
will not be returned to. What I want to
emphasise here is, however, that we may
produce much more from our remote farms
than we do by putting more labour and
money into the land. We may cause these
farms to yield milk as well as meat, pigs
as well as sheep, poultry and eggs for the

io THE STATE AS FARMER

cities as well as for the farmer's family, if we
determine to encourage proper farming by
instituting a complete system of transport
in winter and in summer. I do not say that
the new system will pay the farmer much
more than the present system does ; I reserve
my opinion upon that. But I affirm that
it will give the State four or five times the
weight of good food, and will incidentally
keep in comfort a much larger agricultural
population.

Let me now speak more intimately of
some of these operations to which I have
referred. The milk and eggs require daily
care if they are to be of use. It is to be
noted that I am now speaking of every acre
in the district under review, not of an isolated
farm here and there. I have before me the
new system of which I have spoken, where
the farmers act under the State's own eye.
Though each may yield only a little, the
motor comes to the gate and takes that little
to the duly arranged cooling station or egg-
collecting depot, and leaves the accumulated
load to be treated in accordance with the
district scheme. Here is no middleman or

THE STATE AS FARMER n

huckster : he has been promoted to manage
the depot, and he draws a salary larger than
his 40 per cent, profit came to in the olden
times. If he liked his gig and the open air,
he may, as far as I am concerned, drive the
motor now and leave indoor work to others
with other tastes. But the volume of the
new business surprises him, and he waxes
enthusiastic over the special foods and fer-
tilisers which he arranges to send to his clients
under the new regime.

For something else has arisen of which
he took no note when collecting a few eggs
in the old days. It has reached the intelli-
gence of the farmer at last that even he
can afford to keep good cows, not the in-
different animals he used to breed from in
the sordid past. These that he has secured
by the help of headquarters give him from
900 to 1200 gallons a year instead of the
' sup ' that was scarcely worth milking in
the past time. In fact, milking was a trouble ;
and what the wife cared to procure for the
children came perhaps by the weary hands
of the said children from some farm too
distant for their youthful limbs. Now the

12 THE STATE AS FARMER

wife herself milks and makes a friend of the
one dairy cow she owns. But the district
soon begins to taste the pleasantness of
success and to find a very army of women
to undertake the new and interesting work.

The milk which we are first considering
tends to grow in volume, and the old area
at the head of the valley which used to cut
hay and keep store cattle only has become
a busy hive of milk-producing farms. On
any but the one State system I am advocating
all sorts of risks and difficulties would be
feared ; but here there are, and can be, none.
The whole-milk is sent to convenient centres
of population in the exact quantities required.
The loss can be cut down to the smallest
percentage if there need be any at all. Then
comes the extremely interesting problem of
the manufacture of the surplus collected
into a multitude of different commodities.
Butter, perhaps, should come first for two
reasons. This product is the quickest and
best test of quality that we can apply to the
milk itself. And I am taking for granted
that each district wishes, not to shut its eyes
to its own reputation, but to secure an eager

THE STATE AS FARMER 13

application for its wares. The reader may
take it as a certainty that we cannot get
good butter and milk by law. All we can
do is, perhaps, to prevent bad and poisonous
samples being sold as good. Good things
can only be made by those who desire to
make them. We have, therefore, to establish
a common purpose in one area — an object
against which that farmer offends when he
waters his milk or feeds his cows ill. I need
not say that under the new system the State
will make short work of the farmer who thus
sins against his fellows : he will have to go.

The second of my reasons for putting butter
early on my list of dairy products is that
it is almost as universally needed as milk
itself, and unless it be made in this way out
of surplus milk it cannot be made at a profit
at all. The Englishman is entitled, I think,
to butter from his own dairies even if it be
not that item from which the most profit is
secured. The point is this : Whole-milk
pays every district best because, from the
nature of the case, a better comparative price
can be exacted for it than for the butters
and cheeses which have competitors from

14 THE STATE AS FARMER

across the seas. But to make whole milk
succeed in its mission to our youngsters we
want it good and we want plenty of it. This
involves a surplus — for we cannot ' stock '
it — out of which the lover of good butter is
entitled to his share. And if distribution is
undertaken on large lines, the price, even of
butter, need not be too great. At present
a weekly supply, which is of course too infre-
quent, of butter from a noted dairy to a
small house must generally be obtained by
post at a heavy cost. When all dairies are
famous in their various counties we shall be
able to get the same result from the nearest
shop in any street.

Then come the creams and cheeses of
every variety of which I need not now speak,
but it may be as well to refer to the question
of skim milk. This product is valuable for
the feeding of pigs and poultry in the area
covered ; and when the whole of Great Britain
is considered, we may take it for granted
that the chemists will find a great number
of uses for the surpluses of the surpluses,
so to speak. I am not concerned primarily
with this question of the ' waste,' but I

THE STATE AS FARMER 15

may safely say that when such residues are
available from important scientifically con-
ducted areas they will in all probability
become the means of establishing minor in-
dustries for their complete use in the service
of man.

The subject of poultry is one of the
most difficult that we have to face. If we
could do without our feathered friends
and the eggs which they produce for us, we
might make farming and gardening a little
easier. But for the moment we have to
treat them merely as in existence and requir-
ing the daily services of the collector. The
organisation which has been considered for
milk is available for the daily tribute of
eggs and the periodical collection of poultry.
It is more than probable, it is certain, that
if such daily collection were made, and the
better prices given that the new system would
mean, a considerable amount of additional
care would be bestowed upon poultry, and,
again from headquarters, there would be
obtainable the best advice on strains and
feeding. Fowls, however, tempt vermin into

16 THE STATE AS FARMER

the farmstead ; they destroy some of the
crops if they can reach them ; they transmit
diseases to each other and to the larger stock
unless great care is taken ; and are, as I
have said, very difficult to handle to the
best advantage. But a general or united
attempt to solve the problem of these useful
creatures would no doubt meet with tenfold
the success that isolated efforts, however
ingenious, can expect. The labour bill is an
obstacle to very great effort towards clean-
liness and the eradication of disease where
wholesale operations are attempted, and the
danger of masses treading for long on the
same soil adds greatly to the expense of
housing. Some of the dangers due to the
indiscriminate run of poultry among the
more important animals are almost mysterious,
and it is desirable that each large area in
the future should endeavour to study this
important industry almost de novo in all its
bearings. The usual breeding problems are
of course to be found here as elsewhere. The
hen which does not yield enough eggs to
pay for her keep can be eradicated just as
the worthless cow can, and by similar methods.

THE STATE AS FARMER 17

But at every point science and still more
science is required, and this cannot be secured
unless we deal with areas large enough to
support the labours of a scientific man.
Such scientific man may issue his bulletin
and write his treatise. But more is required
in the form of personal inspection and joint
effort to bring poultry as a whole within the
bounds of civilisation. The problem may be
found fairly simple where large areas of grass-
land are available for coops to be dotted
over the meadow or hillside. No general law
can be laid down in a case where so much
depends upon the taste and inclination of
the helper. Poultry keeping requires for its
real success something of the enthusiasm of
the beekeeper in those to whom the task
belongs. But the feature of the new collecting
agency, which is valuable in this connection,
is that the enthusiast and the cynic are
equally waited on for the abundance of eggs
in one case and in the other for those few
which may escape the wiles of the terrible
rat. And, in addition, we have the good
sporting chance that year by year the rat-
infested area may be reduced, and the poultry-

1 8 THE STATE AS FARMER

rearing area enlarged by the quiet and un-
remitting attention of the poultry manager
at headquarters. There is no industry less
suitable for the energies of the amateur and
faddist. These people merely fall a prey
to those who batten on their enthusiasms
for certain clans in the feathered world.
Disappointment supervenes and the dictum
goes forth that poultry cannot be made to
pay. And we can see a very good reason
why, here in England especially, Providence
should allow such a dictum to go forth. Other-
wise the land would be devoted to that
industry or ' fancy ' alone — after foxes had
been given their allowance — and meat, milk,
corn, and vegetables would have to be obtained
from wherever they might chance to be. The
time is now far past when we can afford to
treat our little land in such a foolish way.
Farming, to be successful to us all as citizens
of the one State — which might possibly in
the cause of righteousness be cut off for a
time from the outer world — must be con-
sidered as an organised whole in which the
products of our very sawdust have their place.
We need poultry and eggs ; it is therefore

THE STATE AS FARMER 19

not to be asked whether we shall produce
them or not, but by what method we may-
best weave their production into our general
scheme — here more, there less, but always
some for the daily motor when it calls.

No gastronomic scare ever affected us
like that sudden spectre of the disappearance
of our breakfast bacon which appalled us
some years ago. Chancellor and ploughboy
alike sat down to weep. The scare did good,
for it forced upon us the two facts that we
liked our bacon and we liked it prime. While
there was plenty of it and it was largely
bad, there was the excitement of a chance
success. But the low prices of that unor-
ganised period brought pigs into disrepute,
and, in consequence, the industry became
more wisely ordeied from the point of view
of quality. It became the rule to kill the
pigs at a certain age or size, and thus bring
about some sort of standard in the bacon of
commerce. If everyone knew the truth, even
now there would still be a lack of that sense
of security which the lover of his breakfast
ought to feel. The pig is not naturally so

c 2

20 THE STATE AS FARMER

dainty in his eating as one would like, and
the Jews had good taste in tabooing him in
the older and the Eastern days. No animal
answers more perfectly to a carefully chosen
diet; but can it be seriously argued yet
that all the pigs which reach the age of curing
have been fed upon those rations which in-
duce a fine flavour and firmness of the flesh ?
How can the buyer tell with certainty from
the outside what the diet has been ? I do
not desire to get into an altercation with
anyone, and will admit that here and there
such an expert might be found. But is
not he just the man who would want to turn
that special vision of his into hard cash ?
It is much simpler to organise the proper
feeding of our pigs ourselves than to put into
the lottery for a chance prize. This useful
animal should be on every farm, even on the
fruit orchards, though we cannot feed him
on peaches yet. For he may vie with the
poultry in ' using up ' all sorts of food and
rough vegetable and other produce to a certain
point. But at that point the scientific feeding
must begin, either on the farm or, better still in
my opinion, at the bacon factory itself. For

THE STATE AS FARMER 21

at that age the pig has done for the farmer
all that it can fairly do. To carry the appro-
priate food from the factory to the farm in
sacks and take it back again in the form of
bacon is essentially a waste — not to speak
of the risk to the proper feeding involved —
and this is the thing which should be avoided
in every field of activity. Waste of transport,
of labour, of material, and of crops is what
must be guarded against at every point. To
carry pigs, for instance, from an eastern to
a western, from a northern to a southern
county to be killed, is an outrage on good
sense, and our new system makes an end of
that misplaced activity at once. The only
calculation to make is the size of the factory
for each area, and that having been decided,
the one transport system carries through
all the operations of the work. As we go
along we shall find out new methods of
breeding and rearing which will simplify the
organised conduct of the undertaking. Our
object, in short, is to secure an article uniform
in quality and abundant from the simple fact
that each animal is used at its maturity —
that is, at a point when additional cost will

22 THE STATE AS FARMER

add nothing to the nation's supplies of the
best food. The eating of meal and such
products should cease when eating does not
yield both better flavour and a decided
surplus in food. There is a time in all such
feeding efforts when marking time super-
venes and labour and all contingent expenses
are practically thrown away. There is a
physical as well as a psychological moment ;
and it is of the utmost importance that
those who direct the production of a nation's
food supply should make that moment their
first study. It occurs in all stock, but in
the pig it takes its simplest form, being free
from such intricacies as milk and eggs and
wool. There may be special considerations
for extra time, such as in the case of the
York ham, but they must be justified by
the extra price of such delicacies. The
sausage may have its rights, too, but they
do not neutralise the more fundamental ones
of the streaky rasher.

The question of the more important items
in our food supply, beef and mutton, is equally
one for very large national treatment. It

THE STATE AS FARMER 23

would require a Dickens to do justice to the
humours of the present system. The original
and deep cogitation required to decide upon
a policy : the subsequent battle of wit and
resolution against dullness and guile in the
various fairs and markets : the pathos of six
months' keep and prices at the end the same
as at the beginning : a war or some such
trouble to save the few at the deadly cost of
the rest of the inhabitants ! So has the round
been going without relief or gleam of light.
The show has added its misleading glory to
this weak, aimless, ignorant work. How can
a show tell us the truth about any of the facts
we want to know ? Or attend a sale, and you
will find that prices depend as much upon
the number of buyers, and the time their
trains start for home, as upon the weight
and quality of the lots. Some items must
reach the hammer first of course ; but that
is just the evil, and it is intolerable that a
farmer's long care and assiduity should result
in a mere chance or toss-up when it comes to
the cash return he needs for all his labour.
And the system is a roundabout and mislead-
ing means of arriving at quality at all. This

24 THE STATE AS FARMER

admirable looking sheep, when we see part of
it in the form of a saddle of mutton, with
two inches of fat over a trifle of lean, can pay
no country in the world. The mere fact that
naked individualism and greedy commerce
decree that we have to take such mutton,
is a poor answer to a self-respecting State
that already spends its money freely upon the
land. We have men who can direct us in
our search for good meat without the waste
and disappointment that is inseparable from
our present system. But we cannot by any
possibility carry their directions into effect
if we have not the power as a State to guide
the breeding, the feeding, and the killing of
our stock on the best lines. Without resort
to artificial feeding we may so plan out the
life histories of our bullocks and our sheep
that the mere passage from one pasture to
another will do much towards a steady up-
ward growth and condition. But at present
that method can only be pursued in the teeth
of antagonistic interests, so that, as I have
said, six months' keep may leave the farmer
with stock no more valuable in the market
than when he bought it. The various soils

THE STATE AS FARMER 25

which result from the different geologic
formations present to the scientist a rough
first suggestion for farming to the best advan-
tage ; but a detailed presentation of the case
by the Board of Agriculture itself would
lead but to a very sorry result. The under-
lying principle among farmers is the besting
of his neighbour, not the working with him
for gigantic national supplies. He wants to
use his skill in dealing, not intelligent farming,
whereas the people as a whole are not con-
cerned in these mutual victories and defeats,
but in the prolific bearing of the soil. The very
system of land tenure adds emphasis to this
bad and uncertain method of farming. I have
no doubt that there is quite a large class of
farmer which thrives upon taking more than
it ought out of the farms it rents for a term.
And, in consequence, there is necessarily
another class which fails and causes loss to
others because it shoulders the work of such
farms denuded for the time. A national
system is unthinkable which does not keep
every acre of the shires in good heart. There
would be no one to overreach, for all would
thrive and combine towards good results.

26 THE STATE AS FARMER

The beef and mutton would be bred to avoid
that waste in useless fat, and they would be
so placed as to use the pastures to the best
advantage. The actual killing and weighing
would be the substitute for the auctioneer's
hammer. And there would be no markets
in the ordinary sense to rig.

I turn to pleasanter themes than killing —
unless it be the green fly — and ask the reader
to consider a different kind of farm altogether.
But even on this fruit farm we want the pig
and poultry because of the manure which the
soil needs. Yet it is difficult to describe to
the disheartened buyer in the town the cross-
currents and dangers and difficulties involved
in an undertaking of this kind. At the present
moment we do not know how we are to get
our strawberries to the market ; and, if we
want to turn them promptly into jam for our
good troops, what possible chance have we
of the proper price due for the labour and
pluck and perseverance that have been
bestowed on these plants ? The items I
have referred to earlier give some indication
of the double injustice of the present system

THE STATE AS FARMER 27

of agriculture. But the fruit farm of, say,
a hundred acres provides a still more striking
illustration. The strawberry, for instance,
needs two outlets. It must get away quickly
under the best conditions from the farm to
the householder, so that its delicious message
may reach child and afternoon tea-party
promptly and in dainty form, with, as it
were, the bloom upon it ; and it must also
have, in order to make its first outlet more
successful, a quick entry into the jam factory
of the district. The strawberry cannot wait
as long even as the egg for collection : it
must go at once to meet its colleague the
cream, or its guardian the preserving sugar.
Raspberries and currants are in like case.
A dreadful season of rain is bad enough for a
fruit farm, but the present market and trans-
port, as now conducted, are worse. That a
country like ours should turn away with a
shrug when its food of the most perfect kind
is allowed to rot is astounding. Before the
war some of us preached the need of more
care of our fruit in the interest of those
sickly faces in the slums who try to extract a
taste of strawberry from samples which look

28 THE STATE AS FARMER

more like cholera than fruit. The war has
emphasised the reasonableness of our conten-
tion. The fruit in this very year has been
ready for our people's use and there has been
no welcome for it, but snarls at the incon-
venience it occasions and attempts to deprive
its growers of their rightful payment. In a
fruit area one would think that the first
national institution would be a fruit station
and collecting depot, in order to make quite
sure that not a single ounce of the goodly fruits
of the earth should be lost. There are apples
and pears to be graded and jams of all kinds
to be made, but, say our rulers, * just fight
this thing out for yourselves.'

There are many who are now trying to
earn a living by means of fruit, and they are
fighting as well as they can in spite of the
poor chances which our present system gives.
But look at the thousands of decaying orchards
along our general countryside left probably
to luck when Free Trade came in. You will
see them in our dairy villages, and you will
hear of the universal rotting that occurs each
year because ' the fruit will not pay to market.'
Such language should be looked upon as a

THE STATE AS FARMER 29

calumny upon our organising powers. Every
one of such orchards in a properly arranged
State should send its few bushels to the grading
depot, just as the farmyard should send its
eggs. Our collecting is bad and our dis-
tributing is bad because we do not know how
to organise our own land. It seems almost
as if the desire for fruit and vegetables in
some of our large manufacturing towns were
atrophied, there is so little to be got. And
can we wonder at this under the circumstances,
and can we be surprised that health in such
districts leaves much to be desired ?

The due cultivation of the grain crops
raises problems similar to those raised by
stock. Wheat, oats, barley, and the rest can
be improved by careful breeding, just as cattle
and sheep can. The objects to be aimed at
are yield, immunity from disease, and quality
of grain. Although Professor Biff en may work
wonders, it seems scarcely probable that we
shall ever grow a strong spring wheat in
England where the conditions are so adverse.
But we may do much to make our crops more
certain and of a better average yield of finer

3o THE STATE AS FARMER

wheat. The best English farmer has prob-
ably little to learn in this matter ; we shall
have plenty to do, however, to bring the
rest of the fraternity up to his level. There
is the right seed to choose, the cleaning and
the tilling of the soil to effect, the manuring
and the due rotation to arrange, and the
weeding to attend to while the crop is growing.
Unless these things can be brought about
continuously throughout a whole countryside,
we might be inclined to admit that they
are scarcely worth doing at all. Uniformity,
too, over a substantial area would bring
better financial results to that area than a
medley of different varieties of wheat. For
I am now speaking of such wheat areas in
Great Britain as are capable of sending con-
signments of a reasonable size to the larger
mills for urban consumption. I have left
for the time the contemplation of our little
valley, which requires some small quantity of
wheat to satisfy its own modest demands,
and am turning to those broader spaces
where cereals are the chief crop and stock
the minor care. It is not here that the
greater losses are occurring from which the

THE STATE AS FARMER 31

State is suffering so severely, but it is possible
that something like double our present ton-
nage might be obtained if we made a deter-
mined effort under skilled direction to bring
our poorest up to our richest yield.

The oat and barley crops also would well
repay this larger effort. The live stock of
the country, as well as man himself, depends
to a large extent on these, and there are
vast quantities of minor but nutritious goods,
made up for convenient use, of which the
manufacture might be largely increased. In
fact, if we were once to begin to try to help
ourselves, we should find quite a busy semi-
rural world making packets of food of all
kinds out of milk and cereals, and using
waste fats, straws, timber refuse, and a hun-
dred and one products for some commodity
which is in demand.

To return to wheat. It has always been
something of a mystery why wheat growing
has been the constant theme of a certain kind
of politician since the Repeal of the Corn
Laws. The eternal iteration of this cry for
wheat has been the cause of the backward-
ness of farming generally. The matter is, of

32 THE STATE AS FARMER

course, only a mystery while we refuse to
believe that farmers and the landed interest
would prefer that a large proportion of our
people should starve rather than that the
necessary food should be imported from abroad
and prices be kept down. But, supposing
that the farmer and his landlord admit that
food of some kind should be allowed to enter
the State, it is a mystery why wheat should
bear the burden of obloquy. From its nature
it is the most suitable thing to carry across
the seas, for the journey improves rather than
injures it, whereas the same cannot be said
of meat or eggs. But, looking at farming here
at home, as if for the moment there were
no imports, success depends, not upon one
crop or kind of stock, but upon the due inter-
mingling of them all. A man would not grow
wheat or hay, and buy manure : feed stock,
and buy turnips and meal ; he endeavours,
as far as he can, to keep stock enough to
manure his land and to grow swedes and
meal sufficient to feed his beasts. By united
action over a large area the difficulties of
doing the best with the soil, and with the profit
and loss account also, are still further met,

THE STATE AS FARMER 33

for the co-operative society has a regulating
influence over the whole and guides the
destinies of the members to a wise and suc-
cessful end. And chiefly is this the case
in the reduction of unnecessary transport
expense and the elimination of individual
salesmanship.

We have before us another swing of the
pendulum towards wheat. The country has
always rushed into wheat growing or sheep
farming according to its mood. Our history
of agriculture tells of little else except the
tragic effect of these impulses upon those
who tilled the land. Mr. Hall is, apparently,
to be asked to devote his great talents to
a repetition of this old story. But even he
will not succeed in doing the impossible. It
is not that land is too obstinate to change
its nature or too variable to want always the
same crop. The difficulty of rushing violently
into wheat, and wheat only, is that land
answers best to what we can do best, and a
varied scheme, action and reaction, will draw
a much more abundant total out of the soil
than any doctrinaire effort inspired by fear
can ever do.

34 THE STATE AS FARMER

One of the chief cruces in our British
farming is the procuring of a sufficient quantity
of leguminous crops for the perfecting of our
feeding arrangements. The quality of our
milk and bacon pre-eminently depends upon
our peas and beans, and if we could secure
a sufficient supply we might give the go-by
to those oilcakes which, unless they are given
in medicinal doses, only spoil our beef. The
craze for maize, too, here in Britain is a
ridiculous one. It has its uses in moderation
as a heat-giving food, but quite a long list of
its shortcomings might be set out in respect
of all farm stock, from poultry to the horse.
In fact, here at home we are in a very happy
state of self-containment if we could only
bring ourselves to work farming out on the
lines of that simple system. If we were to
develop our resources at all points — more
cattle and sheep, more pigs and poultry, fed
by more and better grass, the various home-
grown meals and hay— we should by the
same act increase our cereals of all kinds.
If imports arrived they, too, could be used, but
we should lean less heavily on the outside
world and at the same time give to our

THE STATE AS FARMER 35

population a fuller and more wholesome bill
of fare.

As everyone will probably agree with me
that the result would be welcome, perhaps
the reader will be patient if I go more into
detail as to facts.

D 2

CHAPTER II

Having roughly stated the common com-
mercial needs of agriculture and shown that
the cure lies with a social or State policy,
rather than with an individualistic one, I
now propose to run over some of the points
in scientific farming in order to inquire how
they bear upon this question. An immense
amount of labour has been bestowed upon
this subject during the last half-century.
So much is now known, indeed, that the
problem is not what to do, but when to
begin to do it. In fact, it would unquestion-
ably be impossible to find in any place or at
any time in the world's history a greater
accumulation of unapplied information than
exists at this moment in relation to all
the processes of agriculture. If we look at
the soil itself, we find that the details of the
treatment to be applied to any variety of it

36

THE STATE AS FARMER 37

are potentially in our possession ; but we
lack the larger survey that even the experts
require before making full use of their detailed
knowledge ; and we lack also those well-
informed students in every district who can
direct, over the whole area, the practical
work and the curative applications which
the soil needs. In the commercial handling
which we have been considering, markets and
transport largely control the arrangements.
But in the soil studies we have to look
at geological formations, the action of the
elements, and the chemical and bacteriological
idiosyncrasies of each type, which types are
not uniform in any valley or plain. The
men and women in charge of those investiga-
tions, therefore, may not be able to confine
their labours within the limits of the trade
area involved ; but it does not follow from
this fact that in the central bureau of whatever
unit may be found convenient in practice
there should not be a department to which
all soil inquiries are to be addressed. The
agricultural college would be the natural
head when the matter takes final shape. How
much simpler, then, when we are aiming at

7 1

38 THE STATE AS FARMER

texture, moisture and warmth, at the eradica-
tion of weeds and the abolition of sourness,
at fertility generally and the making of
humus — how much simpler to look at the
natural area as affected by its fundamental
formation, than to take a sample from this
plot and the other and ask for advice on
a five-acre field ! This latter method is
getting the whole fraternity of learned men
into disrepute because of its inherent stupidity.
We cannot afford the men to do justice to each
five-acre field separately. We must use them
for large areas and leave them to deal with
detail in their own way and at their own time,
until a vast system of carefully thought-out
treatment is commenced and kept in being
with the needful corrections as the seasons
pass. I do not wish to deprive a single
farmer of the pleasure to be derived from the
study of the romance of soil ; but I take it
for granted that in this, as in everything
else, there are chiefs and leaders upon whom
we depend for the solution of the more
abstruse problems of land culture. The profit
on farming never comes from the experimental
stages of discovery. It might take a small

THE STATE AS FARMER 39

fortune, indeed it has taken fortunes, to
discover how plants grow, what their appe-
tite for water is, how their various needs can
be supplied and their numerous enemies
destroyed. But when the lessons have been
learned, it is comparatively simple to apply
them to the many needs of plants on the
different soils if we have some one at the
head who can direct the work in the line of
principles rather than in that of red tape and
old Mother Shipton.

Again, the mere taking of samples of soil
is a small part of the work of a useful survey.
The lie of the land should be viewed by the
student, so as to join this up with the known
geological formation and the samples secured.
The very weeds on the surface, too, are an
index of its disease. We are not troubled
here in quite the same way as some other
States are by difficulties of a large mechanical
and physical order. We have not to decide
often between pasture and arable because we
fear that some hillside may make its way into
a great river or the sea. The general con-
venience settles these questions in most cases ;
but in a minor manner much saving might

40 THE STATE AS FARMER

be effected, and much extra food grown, if
the larger interest of the State were kept
constantly in view when treating the farms.

When we remember that the origin of all
plant growth is the infinitely small portion
of food which is contained in the moisture —
for we can hardly conceive of it as water
here — which is spread over the atoms of
which soil is composed, we are compelled to
look at the matter as very delicate ; and
when we remember also the vast volumes
of water which go to a very little food — a
much worse proportion than Falstaff's sack
and bread — we cannot but look upon the
question of water in all its plant-bearings as
a very serious one. The plant takes nothing
but liquid nourishment : its mouth, so to
speak, is not formed for solids. The farmer's
care, then, is centred upon keeping the little
soil particles moist and no more, though
perhaps he little knows what he is doing even
when doing it well. The operations of the
farmer are steadily set upon accomplishing
this object, for none of his ultimate aims,
cereals and stock of all kinds, can be secured

THE STATE AS FARMER 41

unless his plants get nourishment in their
own way. But the special characteristics of
his district in this respect need the careful
study of the general in command. The
adequate tillage, the manuring and liming,
the cover crops, the deep-rooting grasses and
wheat, or, alternatively, good meadow grass —
these different treatments all bear upon the
problem. But it is quite possible that a
broader consideration of some of our areas
might bring about the introduction of more
direct water methods. It seems as if one of
the most fundamental laws of the universe
calls for continual movement in water.
Stagnant water might almost be considered
a disease and treated as such. But the
farmer has not yet come to this knowledge.
He will still let his cows drink stagnant and
polluted water, and allow the mosquito plague
to injure man and beast, because he has
obstinately refused during long years to have
anything to do with the expense of obtaining
a supply of it pure. But his ordinary opera-
tions, even his permanent pasture, would be
more successful if some system were set on
foot for regularly draining his stagnant ditches

42 THE STATE AS FARMER

and returning the water to the soil or to
the drinking troughs of his herds. The cattle
would find it better than their present supplies,
especially if simple filtration could be adopted
at some point near the troughs, and the land
would obtain moisture already impregnated
with plant food. It is difficult to see how
the complete carrying through of dairy work
can be accomplished unless this long-deferred
water crusade be entered upon. The collect-
ing and storing of the rains, in view of their
overwhelming importance in farming itself
and its subsidiary activities, ought to be made
one of the most pressing duties of the State.

But the farmer has still to perform those
tasks which preserve the soil water for his
precious roots and fibres. The perfect tilling
which keeps the moisture that is already there
he must always compass on whatever farm
he may find himself. But the many ways of
adding to the soil moisture at difficult times
require telling and retelling until the whole
district becomes accustomed to the best
methods. All this planning and oversight
for a considerable area needs to be supple-
mented by certain sanctions. The mere loss

THE STATE AS FARMER 43

of money to a dullard or a sluggard is not
a sufficient check on carelessness. The State
requires the final power to change its staff.

I want to make my point clear in this
matter. I am not writing to explain elabor-
ately the beautiful working of nature in this
plant-food and soil-water system. There are
plenty of good books which will tell the farmer
better than I can all there is to be told. But
the State is not served by the knowledge
which a man's brain contains unused, and
the State cannot be sure without taking
some oversight that each farmer reads the
good books and profits by them. But the
State can appoint a man (or men) to see that
the operations necessary to the due carrying
out of the best programme for assisting nature
are fulfilled. It can say to the farmer :
' You may not be interested to know why
good — sometimes deep — ploughing, harrowing,
weeding and manuring all help to make the
soil reach that moist, aerated, warm condition
which causes the seed to burst and the roots
to feed ; but you must be so good as to
believe that this is so, and act accordingly.'
At present each man does what he likes,

44 THE STATE AS FARMER

and the State suffers the loss. We have to
see to it henceforward that the methods
which are known to be the best are applied
to our acres, and that the willing-to-learn
only are allowed to till. There will be a
terrible tug of war ; but the true interests
of the State must be secured in spite of any
separate claim or feudal tradition that may
stand in the way.

The study of the infinitely little and of
its overwhelming importance in the case of
water is matched by that of the living
bacteria which are associated with the farmer's
work. As in the case of soil water, but in a
more marked degree, the working agriculturist
cannot by his own study and research apply
to the land the best treatment himself, still
less can he afford to employ the services
of the professional man. But it would be
comparatively easy to obtain such expert
advice for a whole district and to apply it in
a broad fashion to the soil according to its
needs, not according to the whims or the
resources of its owners under the present
system. The beneficent biological influence

THE STATE AS FARMER 45

is at one with the mechanical and chemical
ones. On the land that is well tilled and
suitably manured the bacteriological record
also is satisfactory. Good tilth is the resultant
of many forces ; but in difficult problems of
farming we are playing with edged tools,
and could easily destroy all chance of financial
success by mixing ignorance into any of the
above efforts towards the amelioration of
poor soil. The supply to farmers of leaflets
and recipes is of small avail. The need in
every direction is for joint work under supreme
science in the nation's cause. The wonderful
fixing of nitrogen is perhaps the most valuable
of the bacteriological discoveries up to the
present ; but the science is still in its infancy,
and can best be developed by the larger
experimental field available in State-directed
agriculture.

The element of water seems to be the
fundamental condition of all life. But in
the study of bacteria we draw near to the
very beginnings of life itself. And we might
almost become theological in this study of
good and evil in their physical origins. It
is, however, of practical value to note how

46 THE STATE AS FARMER

two important laws of life prevail here too.
The good may be encouraged and developed
by the mere destruction of the evil species;
and the evil may be kept down by the
nourishing condition of the good. These are
two distinct efforts in agricultural physiology
just as they are in real life. But as water
is a necessity in all primary considerations
of life, so all our activities in agriculture
are conditioned by, or are dependent upon,
some aspect of bacteriological influence which
injures, warns, or blesses us by its marvellous
power. We have first the fermentative action
in the soil itself, and that primal self-opinion-
ative action which takes from the air and
from the hard, cruel surface of the freshly
broken rocks that nutriment which enables
the first forms of vegetable life to assert
themselves and become visible personalities
before the eyes of man. The next curious
power possessed by these organisms is to
act as intermediaries between the purely
chemical and the organic. Their usefulness
is very great in adapting manures to the
vegetable world, and in redressing the loss
of nitrogen by bringing it back by a very

THE STATE AS FARMER 47

Prospero's summons from the air. The
warnings of bacteria to us are manifold. We
trace tuberculosis in cows and other animals :
we can stamp out all sorts of diseases by-
pursuing them to their bacilli : we are able
to watch by their bacteria the deleterious
influence of dirt and carelessness. But we
can also, by means of this mysterious class
of organism, perform the various miracles
of the dairy industry without any of the
old guessing and failure to which ignorance
was liable in the old days. In fact, under
the guidance of skilled observers, we may now
harness the old agents of light, heat, water,
and air to the more exact service of man in
his farming operations ; but, if any such
physical science has a social, economical,
and even moral bearing, this one in especial
would insist upon the risk of individual licence
and the all-important value of united effort.
It seems a pity that much of our legislation
should be based upon the dread dangers
of bacteria and but little State effort founded
upon those beneficent influences of the same
organisms which are equally potent.

48 THE STATE AS FARMER

The eradication of weeds would make
a fine test of the adequate working by the
State of its own lands. If we became short
of food it would be no great consolation to
know that we had 50 per cent, of our produce
in the form of weeds. It is, however, quite
possible that fifty is below the percentage
that we are losing through the lack of a
determined effort to produce crops only and
no weeds. The matter is not confined to
the mere act of weeding. The seed-bed that we
have prepared so warm and moist and aerated
is spoiled by the interloping weed ; and when
the reduced crop is gathered, the cereals
and other kinds whose seeds are garnered
become mixed with the seeds of the weed
and are separated with difficulty and only
partially. In aiming at a good crop in
which the individual plants are required to
attain a fine standard, the presence of weeds
is a complete stumbling-block. There is no
elbow-room, and the plant food is robbed,
meddled with, and spoiled. Now, if we
want a larger yield, we must make a special
point of allowing nothing to divide the
attention of the soil with the crop itself. I

THE STATE AS FARMER 49

wonder what some of the intensive farmers
would say if they saw weeds eating up the
valuable fertilisers upon which they had
spent so much money ? The mischief is
precisely the same, although it may be ignored
upon an ordinary farm : the loss in money
is there, even if it be uncounted.

But the eradication of weeds is essentially
a work, not for one farmer, but for all acting
together with one impulse and on a concerted
scheme. The matter is one closely connected
with our meadows as well as with arable
land, and might require very drastic measures
where the object in view — the preservation
of the flavour of milk in a valley or the
destruction of some insect pest — is worth
an infinite amount of trouble. And in this
connection I may remind the reader that
weeds are the bases of many injurious insects,
diseases, and rusts which sometimes destroy
our crops like a pestilence devastates a land.
The complete inquiry into such questions
as these, and the organising of the campaign
against the common foe, is the work of
scientific men as wary and wise as we can
obtain them. It often happens that some

5o THE STATE AS FARMER

weed keeps alive for its future deadly work
on valuable crops an insect or pest that
would otherwise perish ; and, in any case,
these injurious creatures lie upon weeds com-
paratively immune from detection, whereas
upon a row of beans or mangolds some
attempt might be made to combat them.
And what incentive is there to one active and
intelligent farmer to get clean acres and try
to get well-fed and ripened crops, if he
knows that the seeds of his routed enemies
are floating gaily to him over the fences, and
the insects and rusts are being maintained
in tranquillity by his neighbour across the
road ? There is so great a field for organisa-
tion in these matters. The weeds themselves
may contain members, such as henbane and
nightshade, that are worth attention from
the medical point of view. Or some other
nuisance may have a use and may do no harm
if grown in some inferior patch and not indis-
criminately among the crops. But the only
place where such questions can be considered
in all their bearings — the market value of the
crop, the necessary methods of cultivation, and
the general convenience — is the headquarters

THE STATE AS FARMER 51

of the district with which will lie the respon-
sibility of turning the weed harvest into cash.
Until we have faced this weed question
resolutely we can scarcely begin to treat
farming on the higher scale. If we recognise
the crude fact that turnips and garlic
injuriously affect the flavour of milk —
although, of course, there may be some who
like these flavours and we may have to
cater for them yet — we might presume that
the feeding of cows was capable of becoming
almost a fine art. I mean, primarily, the
feeding of cows in the meadows upon the grass
which will be grown when weeds are removed
and definite experiments to this end are set
on foot. The careful addition to the grass of
a daily ration of steamed hay and bean and
pea meals has for long been a safe avenue to
flavour. But there are sure to arise conditions
upon some farms in which it is inconvenient
to supplement the herbage itself, and we may
welcome the time when brains put into this
question in our various geological areas may
produce for us quite a new variety of delicate
flavours and aromas in our butters and
cheeses.

E 2

52 THE STATE AS FARMER

Our present system is far too coarse and
gross. We need oilcake only as a medicine,
and maize as an occasional pleasant change,
as I have already said. The food we require
for our stock is that grown at home under
better conditions and upon the best advice.
But this advice can only be obtained in
perfection when we employ our scientific men
to experiment and test, not towards cheapness,
which will never pay anyone, but towards
purity of food and the consequent eradication
of the weed idea from every department of
farming.

The toll which insects and fungi of every
description exact from animal and vegetable
life is extraordinarily heavy. It is difficult
to know exactly where to begin in referring
to these pests, for they prey upon each other
as well as upon our stock and crops. Many
of them are so difficult to exterminate that
it is necessary to destroy their hosts with
them, and to leave the ground free from the
diseased or infested trees or shrubs for years.
I have already mentioned two facts which
bear upon this troublesome question. Weeds

THE STATE AS FARMER 53

are the hosts of many noisome pests, and
neglected orchards where the trees are covered
with lichens and moss act as winter resorts for
them. There is neither an animal nor plant
that has not a parasite of some kind which
aims at living upon it. The destruction that
would result if no effort to combat the evil
were made is amazing. Fortunately, man
is helped in his efforts by other creatures,
the chief of which will always be the birds.
It passes belief what one small bird will
devour or carry to its young in a day. It is,
therefore, of great importance that the farmer
should treat with forbearance certain attacks
upon his crops which appear to be made by
birds. I say ' appear,' because many apparent
attacks on crops or fruit are really attacks
upon the insect life which is devouring the
incipient fruit or vegetable. Of the pests
on a larger scale — the vole, and even the rat —
the owl gives a good account.

Of all marvels of creation the disease,
parasite, or organism called ' fluke ' is one
of the greatest. The life-history of the crea-
ture is a wonderful study in environments.
The first of these is water, without which the

54 THE STATE AS FARMER

eggs are not hatched. Then the weird thing
that is hatched seizes upon a certain little
snail and makes its abode with it, and there
sets to work to weave other destructive spells.
The resultant parasites represent the action
known as lying in wait, for they just become
encased and remain quiet until the sheep
swallows one of them with its food. What a
study in numbers is here ! Forty or fifty
thousand are prepared in their blind way to
die to catch one sheep, because that one
sheep may bring about the birth of forty
or fifty thousand more parasites. And an
epidemic, secured by a wet season, may
cause us to lose to the fluke-enemy millions
of sheep ! Here, surely, is still another reason
for careful drainage, and for the guidance
of those higher students who can actually
trace out the life-story of this wonderful
pest and teach us how to deal with it in
the wisest way.

Now if nature, to put the case vaguely,
inspires this organism to transform itself, to
wait about, to run all risks — and these are
so great that a one or two per cent, survival
has to be sufficient to carry through its

THE STATE AS FARMER 55

destiny with, success — is it not probable
that these thousands of other pests will
laugh to scorn the efforts of a few isolated
farmers endeavouring to perform their duties
in a scientific manner ? And in the case of
so large and valuable a thing as a sheep we
might expect a certain ease and thorough-
ness of defence or antidote : the examination
of the patient is simpler and the treatment
would appear to be worth attending to
because of the money value involved. The
same may be said of the various other ills
that cattle, sheep, and pigs are heir to. But,
in these attacks of disease or pest, the
difficulty does not lie in the importance or
insignificance of the patient. For, though
a sheep is individually of more importance
than a potato, a field or the national acreage
of potatoes is of more value than many sheep.
And, as we have seen in the case of fluke, the
attack upon valuable stock may come from
some most insignificant area of neglected
poor land. We may take it, then, that
whether it be the indiscernible origin of
swine fever, mange or the abortive influences,
the horrible fly-nuisances, and other sorrows

56 THE STATE AS FARMER

of cattle, sheep, and pigs ; the parasites and
ailments of poultry ; the flies, weevils, and
fungi of trees ; or the plant-lice, root-flies,
beetles, moths, mildews, and rusts of our
multifarious crops — these all come from the
same source, a lack of due balance and care
in farming, and they all depend for their
suppression upon a united effort on the part
of all upon whom the responsibility for
the land falls. When I use the expression
' balance,' I mean that both land and the
things which draw their sustenance from the
land must be supplied with nutriment in
neither too little nor too great quantities.
Manure can be applied so lavishly that the
soil cannot assimilate it, just as cattle may
have supplied to them coarse, rank food which
both injures them and spoils them to some
extent for the service of man. Poultry may
run upon the same ground in such hordes
and for so long, pigs may be so carelessly
handled and fed, sheep and cattle may be
so neglected that nature revolts and those
strange tribes of the, to us, unclean pest
that act under its name supervene. There is
a due balance, good sense, wholesomeness —

THE STATE AS FARMER 57

it hardly matters by what name we call it —
which is absolutely necessary in the tillage
and management of the soil, if we desire to
walk humbly by the side of Nature as her
children. And it is reassuring to the ordinary
farmer to know that if he will, without undue
cynicism, follow the advice of those who in
marvellous fashion have tracked, and are
tracking, these terrible plagues to their lairs,
the various preventives and cures are often
very simple, and are reduced in many
directions to cleanliness and fresh air and
free space. But, who among us can look
upon such a scourge as fluke without awe
and a desire to work together shoulder to
shoulder as members of one State towards
a new spirit and new methods in our farming
life ?

The item of manures and fertilisers is in
itself sufficient to prove my contention to be
true — that British agriculture needs strong
scientific management and control such as
the State alone can give. The kindly earth
will always yield some surplus to its inhabi-
tants : the experiments of a negative character

58 THE STATE AS FARMER

give results which prove this, although they
show that such crops are meagre and pre-
carious. By care and thoughtful farming,
and the use of the natural manures, some
advance can be made from the pendulum
swing of primitive prodigality and want into
a reasonable average of production ; but,
even here, if the maximum yield be vital to
the State, some sort of oversight or rude set
of principles must be applied to the land.
When it comes, as now, to the urgent need
of greatly increased production, the call
for science is imperative in order that the
due application of fertilisers may be made
economically and the weight of crops be
multiplied. To act to the best purpose in
this matter, it is necessary to treat the land
first as if no outside help were obtainable.
All the resources of cleaning and tilling the
land should be exhausted, soil water should be
conserved, weeds removed, and nitrogenous
methods used before we, in theory, begin
to apply the principle of manure. In its
simplest form this is, of course, the putting
of stock upon the land. And here again —
in theory, as I have said, in order that we

THE STATE AS FARMER 59

may define more clearly the method and the
system — we should obtain all possible results
from the natural before introducing artificial
plans. Some of our old meadows afford illus-
trations of what riches may be grown up
gradually by a wise method of natural treat-
ment by means of stock. It is difficult to
draw the exact line between slow enrichment
and gradual impoverishment. We can only
recognise the difference between the greedy
purpose of overstocking and overselling, which
little by little takes more out of the soil
than it can stand, and that slow process
of building up to which the land responds
so faithfully. The first means of arriving at
this increase of reserve may for my purpose
be taken as the systematic use of home-
grown crops to feed the stock and thus
obtain the dual benefit of better stock, meat,
milk, and the rest, and the more thorough
manuring of the land.

When we have reached this theoretical
position, we may the more readily discern
the higher branches of fertility and heavier
production. There are three requirements
which the soil sometimes lacks, and the

60 THE STATE AS FARMER

above careful and complete farming will have
disclosed the various places which need one
or other of them. Nitrogen, potash, and
phosphorus are those plant-foods which are
sometimes, indeed often, lacking on our
farms. The feeding of the stock by outside
articles, such as oilcake, will effect the needed
addition to some extent. But for many
years now there have been used in a rough-
and-ready way fertilisers which put into
the soil the chemical constituents required.
And it needs little imagination to picture
the commercial world let loose upon the
farming fraternity with their feeding stuffs
and fertilisers. The farmer is no match for
his opponent, and he succumbs in two ways.
He applies the wrong foods and fertilisers
at the wrong prices, and, nature having no
pity upon ignorance, he fails in his results,
and either goes down altogether or gives the
whole system a bad name and parts with
it for ever — unless, indeed, some new panacea
comes along.

There is only one safeguard from this
disastrous routine — science and more science
carefully applied by method and under a

THE STATE AS FARMER 61

system which leaves little to the individual
concerned. We cannot afford any longer to
allow our farmers to be either the dupes
or the exponents of ignorance. The men
in command must apply the best science
to the various units, and the farmer must
take his orders from the appointed managers
of the State. ' State-managed undertakings
never prosper,' say some. And yet our
armies and navies, our post offices and many
other services, have not made an altogether
disastrous record, and these records have
improved with increased democratic control.
We allow the State to deal with shells, though
it cannot be trusted with eggs !

As a matter of fact, however, the State
does concern itself with this sordid question
of manure. It passes laws, the object of
which is to secure to the buyer of feeding
stuffs and fertilisers the quality that he
purports to have bought. An Act seldom
finds its way on to the Statute book until
a deadly beaten track of robbery and injustice
has made it necessary. And when you have
got your Act, to what extent is it used by
the farmer ? I am suggesting that the State

62 THE STATE AS FARMER

as a State cannot be content to see an
occasional farmer buying fertilisers and feeding
stuffs and out of those a still fewer occasional
ones using the Act to secure the delivery
of the real thing they bought. I affirm
that a system which is good for one is good
for all : that all who till the land should have
a simple means of putting upon that land
exactly what it requires : and that they
should have no trouble with analysts, but
should simply send to their district depot
for the exact article and the exact quantity
that their district adviser prescribes.

But the State does more than pass an
Act. It issues capital Leaflets through the
Board of Agriculture, which tell the farmer
exactly what to buy and what to do. Let
me refer to No. 80 in this connection. I will
quote a fairly long passage, because it will be
found to bear upon what I have advanced
previously in the matter of soil surveys.

In reading the following general recommenda-
tions as to manuring [says the Leaflet], the reader
should bear in mind that, though the advice offered
may be serviceable in the majority of cases, it
will not be applicable to exceptional circumstances.

THE STATE AS FARMER 63

Farmers who manure on general principles will, no
doubt, usually be right, but those who are dealing
with soil of an exceptional character, or with a farm
that has been managed in an exceptional manner,
may be led very far astray by blindly following
general principles. The manuring of meadows may
be taken as an example. The teachings of Rotham-
sted, and of several other experimental stations,
show that, as a rule, potash is a most important
ingredient in a manurial mixture, and yet there are
cases where this substance does harm rather than
good when used for meadow hay. For the turnip
crop also potash is usually necessary, and its use will
leave a profit, though it cannot be said that, in many
cases, its presence or absence is a matter of vital
importance. There are cases, however, in which
potash is the most important element of all in the
treatment of this crop ; so much so, indeed, that the
most liberal applications of nitrogen and phosphates
may be absolutely without effect if unsupported by
potash.

It is, therefore, the first duty of a farmer to
ascertain what the manurial requirements of his
own particular holding may be. And not only so,
but, if his land be variable in character, he should
take steps to become acquainted with the peculiarities
of every field. To rest satisfied with less is to
conduct his business in a haphazard fashion. His
practice may be right, but there is a great chance that
it will be wrong, and a serious error in judgment

64 THE STATE AS FARMER

may result in heavy pecuniary loss. To some it
may seem an extreme recommendation to make
that every farmer should be an experimenter, but
nothing less will meet the necessities of the case.
What with the extra labour involved in measuring
and weighing, and the loss in yield that some of
the methods of treatment may entail, experimenting
cannot be done without expense ; but for ordinary
practical purposes five pounds will go a long way
towards obtaining information that may be worth
many times this sum. The land must be measured,
and the manures must be weighed and properly mixed
and applied, and though the experiment cannot be
said to be complete till the produce has been weighed,
an experienced farmer can often estimate with the
eye with sufficient accuracy what the result of his
experiments has been.

Now, if any of us were ill we should
not consult the writings of a specialist who
might say that aconite was generally useful
but that belladonna had been known to give
good results. We should, go to an ordinary
practitioner and ask him to tell us what was
wrong, and only for further advice in face of
a difficulty would he take us to a specialist.
Here, then, in land treatment we want first
our chemist, biologist, or practical professor
of the whole art to look at not onlv our own

THE STATE AS FARMER 65

farm, but adjoining ones, and put, field by
field, the whole district into good heart for
us. Each farmer would by this method be
helping to make the experiment, but the
word ' experiment ' would seldom be needed,
for the word to be used would rather be
' treatment,' which in the majority of cases
would be certain in result.

I am now going a step farther in my
demands. I say that in every walk of
life the State places obstacles before those
citizens who would rush unprepared into
positions which require education and ability.
I think I may claim that the short review
that I have made of the requirements of
agriculture shows that the land pre-eminently
calls for talent and education for its successful
working. And yet we make no inquiries
as a State concerning the attainments of
those who undertake this most responsible
of a citizen's part. The naval, military, and
civil services are entered through examina-
tion ; the post office is graded according to
ability and usefulness ; the medical body
passes to its work through the severe ordeal
of its training and tests ; engineers of all

66 THE STATE AS FARMER

kinds to succeed must show their credentials ;
lawyers must digest much learning as well
as their dinners ; our very cab-drivers must
have their licences, but any booby among
us all can get on to the land, and, what
is worse, can keep his betters off.

The time has passed for such futile and
dangerous methods. The land for its due
working and management requires all the
learning and ability that we can compass for
her. We need commanding officers and all
the various ranks down to the private in this
war for a production which is equal to our
country's needs. I have already hinted that
from the by-products of farming many in-
dustries may yet spring up, but at present
we have no central management — chemical,
biological, and botanical — whose constant
study is the production, working up, and
making popular new and valuable foods at
a low cost.

CHAPTER III

I have attempted to show that the problem

of increased production in England is largely

a commercial one. And I have tried to

explain to the reader that nothing but the

highest science, which we have to our hand

if we care to use it, can provide the true basis

for the commercial effort. I should like now

to give some rough indication of the machinery

by which business man and scientific expert

are to work together, and I will take an

imaginary valley as an illustrative unit in

the general scheme. I ought perhaps to

choose one of our less famous valleys in order

that the effect upon production may be more

clearly seen. Where cheese-making has from

the far past been a staple industry, commerce

might prefer to collect and grade rather

than manufacture in large bulk. And as

it is the backward areas rather than the

67 F 2

68 THE STATE AS FARMER

better ones that should show the greatest
increase, they will leave me a freer hand in
suggesting drastic measures of co-operation.

At the lower end of the valley there will
probably be a town standing upon one of our
great trunk lines. In such a situation it can
distribute the products of the valley efficiently
and well, although it should be made clear
that it is not absolutely necessary to choose
such a position : it is only natural to do so
and to take advantage of the physical fact
that the trend in a valley is downwards from
the source of the river, and therefore the
heavier our produce the more we shall save
in motive power when collecting. Our railway
system will in the main guide us in our choice
of headquarters, and in some of our nobler
valleys we may have to divide the area into
two or more parts. Let us consider the
various operations that we have to carry out
at some centre or centres, and we shall then be
able to estimate better the arrangements to be
made. The collecting of milk involves speed
and punctuality as well as the most up-to-date
arrangements for preserving sweetness and
quality. The surplus involves butter and

THE STATE AS FARMER 69

cheese-making facilities, which again pre-
suppose storage capacity. Eggs must also
have speed, grading staffs, and storage if we
are to do justice to them. The bacon factory
requires, in my opinion, fattening houses in
order that for the last few weeks the pigs
may be scientifically fed. The question of an
abattoir for beef and mutton is so important
that the requirements of larger areas than the
usual unit may have to be considered separ-
ately, and the general convenience and sani-
tation of the district must be studied. But,
in spite of this, the due treatment of the valley
stock must be secured by leaving the planning
of the whole to the managers in the best
interests of the State. When we examine
the questions of wool, hides, and offal we shall
see what an immense field is open for business
organisation reinforced by State guidance.
There is a faithful friend of man that we must
remove from these sordid matters of food.
But the horse will, I trust, be treated in a new
and wiser way than by the present system.

The fruit and vegetables of each unit
require the same speed as milk and eggs, and,
like the terrible armies of the present day,

70 THE STATE AS FARMER

must keep to the railway. This department,
again, needs grading and manufacturing staffs
and storage room. It is quite possible, too,
that the cereals may need what the Americans
call elevators in a modest form and mills
of various kinds for their treatment. In
any case the depot must provide itself with
feeding stuffs ; and the seed question must
receive adequate attention, whether cleaning
be done on the spot or not.

Besides the milling and other machinery
necessitated by the operations at the depot,
there is a call for such movable engines and
implements as are too expensive to be provided
upon each separate farm. The threshing
machine is the most obvious case, but it will
be found, as the work proceeds, that it will
be much cheaper for all if some of it be
done by district implements. Spraying, steam-
ploughing, and the like would be better if
carried out on co-operative lines.

Fertilisers, and the goods of all descriptions
which are at the present time kept at the
store for the members of an agricultural
co-operative society, will necessitate a ware-
house. The activities of all such joint pur-

THE STATE AS FARMER 71

chases wilJ be multiplied when the whole
country is united in a common purpose. But
it is probable that not merely the farmer,
but the labourer also will in the future receive
the benefits that co-operative dealings secure.
It will be noted that the above list of
central premises involves the oversight of
trained men and women. And it will be
conceded further that a successful manage-
ment can only exist side by side with that
scientific oversight of farming operations upon
which I have laid stress. It is, therefore,
evident that the Professor and his assistants
and pupils should not be very far away. It
would be impertinent on my part to lay down
a scheme, not only of agricultural education,
but of the higher management. I am content
to urge that this higher management must be
secured and its local habitation arranged for.
The very life of the population depends upon
those bacteriological and chemical tests which
but few among us can undertake. I have
gone in some detail into these points of
scientific demands, and though it is not for
me to dictate the order and method, I am
justified in demanding that ample convenience

72 THE STATE AS FARMER

should be secured to, and dignified arrange-
ments should be made for, those experts and
trained managers, whatever be the particular
locality from which their influence is to
proceed. When we have a Resident for each
valley, and a charming Residency chosen or
built in a central locality, we shall feel re-
assured concerning the national estimate in
which education is held. The college and
farm school must not be confounded with the
commercial and skilled management of the
area. But, on the other hand, the records of
these educational institutions ought to contain
the honoured names of the practical valley
staff, for the obvious purpose of agricultural
education should be to supply possessors of it
to our national purposes and undertakings.

We have, then, to provide accommodation
at one or more centres for milk distribution,
butter and cheese-making ; for egg grading,
storing, and distribution ; for pig feeding and
bacon curing ; for meat and the local wool
market ; for fruit distribution, pulping, grad-
ing, and the manufacture of jam ; for vegetable
distribution ; for the minor operations of
milling, crushing, and the sale of the cereals

THE STATE AS FARMER 73

and leguminous crops ; for the issue to the
farmer of the feeding stuffs and the fertilisers
he needs, and the heavy machinery that is to
be hired for threshing and other operations ;
and, finally, for the great store purposes
which co-operation includes in its beneficent
work.

In all these activities there are some
principles which must be observed if the State
is not to stultify itself. One of the tendencies
in human nature which, curiously enough,
must be watched, even in co-operative move-
ments, is that of reducing the means of liveli-
hood in others in order that our own may be
increased. The hunger for cheapness might
conceivably cause the inhabitants of one slum
to sweat their neighbours in the next ; and a
sleepy State might wake up to find that it
had tolerated in itself exactly that which it
had refused to sanction in the individual.
The consideration, therefore, of this bundle
of useful labours should always include the
well-being of those who are to be engaged in
the various occupations. It is not necessary
to crowd them all together just because there
appears to be only one station on the trunk

74 THE STATE AS FARMER

line, and only sufficient houses in this squalid
town. I firmly believe that railways are made
for England, not England for railways ; and
I take it for granted that the State, as soon
as it is really wide awake, will carry its
necessary trains from any convenient centre
and insist upon due organisation, just as if
troops rather than milk, eggs, and strawberries,
were on the line.

The need for suitable houses, too, must be
recognised in every concerted effort such as
this which we are making. But I shall
venture to devote a few pages to this subject
later. All I will again emphasise here is that
to a State the conditions of the worker in a
trade are as important as the usefulness of that
trade to its customers. And if this objection-
able doctrine is the cause, or one of the causes,
of hostility to a movement such as I am
considering, I wish that the objection could
be stated clearly by those who entertain it,
so that we may see where we are. Lord
Midleton's attack upon education affords a
precedent for the honest treatment I crave.
If certain sections of our people yearn for
ignorance and squalor in order that they may

THE STATE AS FARMER 75

the more fully appreciate their own learning
and welfare, let us put the matter before the
constituencies and vote upon it. If we lose,
it will be only for the time : the choice will
be before us, blessing or cursing ; and I know
that some day we shall choose the right
god to serve.

If I may now return to milk — our pro-
blem as a people is to get a larger quantity of
pure quality from the farms to the consumers.
Here I am immediately in presence of an
important valley requirement which I have
not yet alluded to. I have, however, already
pointed out that if we are aiming at quantity
we must have recourse first to well-bred
cows. And, in consequence, it is of the very
first importance that the valley manage-
ment should have good bulls, for they seem
to have a greater influence upon the milking
properties of the calf than the mother herself
has. If there were no other reason for inter-
ference in farming affairs, this item would
be sufficient. We cannot afford any longer
to allow the indiscriminate use of worthless
stock, for we might feed two bullocks and
one good cow while we are wasting our

y6 THE STATE AS FARMER

pastures on three bad cows for the same
result in milk.

Again, we have to look at quality as
well as quantity, and it is dreadful to think
that some authorities consider that one-
tenth of our milk supply contains the germs
of tuberculosis. Here, again, we have no
real need to lie under this cloud of risk.
It is quite possible to remove from our herds
the dangerous units. Is it necessary for me
to labour the point that it is easier and better
in every way for the State to intervene at the
farm than for the municipalities to interfere
when the mischief has been done and perhaps
large volumes of pure milk have been mixed
with the diseased portions ? Before I leave
the question of disease, I may note that
milk has an affinity for, a talent for taking to
itself, all sorts of ills that gather round it,
and therefore it is of the utmost importance
that all who are in any way connected with
the handling of the herds should be in good
health. Can we catch up with the bacilli of
any of the fevers if we once let them get a
start of us in our milk at the farm ? Can
we be too careful in our arrangements ? Is

THE STATE AS FARMER 77

the matter too small for the State itself to
stoop to ? Ought we to trust anyone but the
medical authority on the spot to take all
precautions, and to use all educational in-
fluences to make those who might spread the
evil fully alive to the risks ?

The next difficulty we have with milk is
to keep it clean at the farm. Those who have
made elaborate tests report that half the
impurities which are found in milk at the
end of its journey to the homes have entered
it at the farm itself. Some of these are
the direct results of dirty habits, but many
of them are due to pure ignorance in the
carrying out of regular duties. The bedding
down and the feeding of cows, for instance,
injure milk because of the dust they cause,
and should therefore be attended to at any
time rather than the milking hour. The first
piece of machinery that comes into use — if
we except actual milking machines, which
are still only on their trial, and a simple
filter — is the cooler or refrigerator which is
used at the farm itself. As certain societies
already reserve the right to approve of the
pattern of such cooling apparatus, we are

78 THE STATE AS FARMER

not far away from State interference in the
matter, and therefore not far from a general
admission that my claim for State farming
is wise. If everyone could see the risks they
run — and dirt affects cheese prejudicially as
well as milk — and the horrors from which
the State is endeavouring to guard them in
a gingerly way, there would be such an
uprising that the necessary machinery of
cleanliness could not be provided in sufficient
haste. But when we remember that the
best place for milking is in the field, we must
also keep in mind that a sufficient number
of cooling stations may have to be provided
along the collector's route. This part of
the work has hitherto been carried out by
the farmer, and the milk supply societies
have been content to make regulations and
institute tests. When we reach a better
system and can treat a district as if it were
one large farm, we shall be able to simplify
procedure and at the same time reduce tests
to a minimum, because the new theory of
farming will be how to produce the best milk,
not how to escape or pass the inspector's
test.

THE STATE AS FARMER

79

In all our processes it is a general rule
that the nearer we can get to nature the
better. If we could by the mere application
of speed get all our milk to headquarters
without interfering too much with its natural
heat, we should have a simpler problem before
us. We could then treat artificially that
portion for which we had orders as whole
milk — though there are agencies which set
out to deliver the milk warm to the consumer
— and deal with the rest in any manner we
liked. But we have to decide at the refriger-
ating moment what portion of the day's yield
we want for cheese and leave it in its natural
state. But I must not appear to be lecturing
the reader upon cheese-making. I merely
want to urge that a good milk valley will
provide material for whole-milk, butter, and
cheese if we leave the managers to plan out
the methods and erect the necessary buildings
where they are required. It is so important
in the manufacture of cheese that exquisite
cleanliness should be observed, that a dairy
should be another name for purity such as
Listerism denotes. Can we attain this clean-
liness as certainly in each of twenty farms

80 THE STATE AS FARMER

as we can in one dairy which treats the
milk from the group ? Remember we are
intent on a much larger yield from our present
farms. Can we for one moment believe
that capital will spring up and an army of
cheese-makers arise in the separate farmsteads
that have been ignoring everything but the
summer grass ? If we can get milk from
them as well as beef, we shall have to do the
dairy work ourselves and gradually coax
the farmer into better farming habits, a
larger, better paid labourers' list, and higher
class stock.

The value of poultry in our national food
supply is so great that it would be a most
cheering fact if in each of the areas which
we are considering as units a really scientific
effort were made to organise the production
of poultry as well as eggs. The fattening at
some centre would enable this organisation
to be undertaken in such a way that turkeys,
geese, ducks, and fowls would reach the
consumer in a regular stream. But the
matter could only be successfully carried
through if the valley took up the production

THE STATE AS FARMER 81

very seriously and aimed at a real reputation
in this department of farming. The stock
would have to be carefully chosen and the
male portion of it regularly renewed ; a few
enthusiasts would assist by working faith-
fully at the improvement of the strain or
strains which are made use of and endeavour-
ing to establish a national reputation. The
due balance between the repute for show
birds and that for fine table poultry is well
worthy of particular attention. The risks
of feather notoriety can only be avoided
by sane and business-like attention to the
true methods of ' utility.' Exactly the same
breeding methods are required for poultry
as for cattle. The elimination of the bad
layer is imperative if the national interest
is to supersede that of the ' fancier.' But
the difficulties are great, and can only be
overcome by serious business methods applied
to sanitation as well as to breeding and
feeding. The depot must be prepared to
store eggs as well as to grade and deliver
promptly, and it must be left to each district
to decide upon the policy to pursue in the
matter of the fat poultry, so much depends

82 THE STATE AS FARMER

upon the amount of individual attention which
the workers in the area are prepared to give.

The pig is the natural dependent of the
dairy, for he uses up the spare milk ; but he
also depends upon arable land, for he thrives
upon potatoes. The pig, therefore, takes his
place with all propriety in a national scheme.
But he takes this place with even more comfort
and security in a local valley scheme, because
one of the greatest dangers to the industry
is swine fever, and the risk of this is much
more imminent when pigs are purchased in
a market instead of being bred at home.
The little space for cereals, too, is important,
since cleanliness is of immense value, and
towards this clean bedding has the chief
influence.

The breeding of pigs has been regularised
to a small extent by the foundation in certain
districts of bacon factories which aim at a
definite size or weight for their purpose.
But consider the probabilities all round for
reasonable prices for pigs where the grower
has to depend upon his own skill and resources
in all the preliminaries and then has to face

THE STATE AS FARMER 83

all the chances of markets. Here, up a little
hidden valley, is a farmer who considers the
likelihood of profit in various directions and
weighs in the balance the pig. He has little
choice of breed, being shut up to the nearest
thing he can buy. He makes a shot at
feeding, and has but little to select from,
seeing that grass, grass, grass is the usual
rotation. Who can tell what the result will
be, and how can he market this result ?
He cannot, and does not : he just kills and
eats the product, and there it ends.

Now a bacon factory in the area of his
valley takes him and his neighbours in hand
— a bacon factory, I mean, such as I have
asked for, run by the State in all its rami-
fications. The first thing to decide upon
is the breed to adopt. That, probably, would
be settled by using the particular kind which
the best judges in the valley had been
using, and perhaps importing a little new
blood to rectify the weaknesses of the local
specimens. The general arrangements for
feeding — not overfeeding — and keeping clean
would form the substance of a leaflet, and
the manager of the district would supplement

G 1

84 THE STATE AS FARMER

its teaching by periodical visits. Skim milk,
potatoes, and barley meal are looked upon
as the best food. Therefore the pig is the
test of, and the incentive to, ideal farming
such as I have urged throughout. The
cereals might be used more freely at the
factory than at the farm, but the details
would be similar on all the farms and a
uniformity in result would soon be accom-
plished. I hope that the reader will give
his kind attention to the benefits which
a simple though exact system such as this
will confer both on the farmer and on the
ordinarv citizen. The farmer does his work
under the assurance that when it is finished
he will receive in full measure the payment
for his toil. He does not have to search
the country for a customer or to kill for
himself in sheer desperation. His pig has
become a portion of the national food supply,
and the manager of the factory has become
an agent with whom the consumer has to
deal. But this is not all. We are apt to
take it for granted that our meat reaches
us naturally in perfect condition, free from
all trace of disease, and clean. We are in

THE STATE AS FARMER 85

a fool's paradise, for this vast volume of meat
is subject to the scrutiny of an army of
inspectors who find some gruesome facts.
When a valley is farmed by a State, and that
State considers health the prime object to
be secured, the inspector's work is done
for him before he begins. There is no
antagonism, no clash of interests. The first
care of the manager is to eliminate disease of
every kind, and his second is to apply to his
painful office all the decencies that are avail-
able. In this very important matter of
disease there are two agencies at work. The
ordinary veterinary inspections are of very
special care and thoroughness, because here
the anxiety is not to pass an ailing animal,
but to eliminate it from the rest. Conse-
quently the state of all the carcasses at
the factory are of interest as indicating the
health of the district, and the slaughtering
can scarcely avoid becoming in effect post-
mortem examination.

The organisation of the pig industry in
any district is now an elaborately simple
process. We can place a valley in the hands
of an expert such as Mr. Loudoun Douglas,

86 THE STATE AS FARMER

and he will arrange every detail of the work,
from the choice of breeds and the feeding of
the stock to the marketing of the very smallest
portion of offal. If this be the case, does it
not seem an infinitely painful fact that under
present conditions, although we may put
down plant to cope with every acre in our
district, we are not in a position to insist
that every such acre should send up its quota
at regular intervals so that the agricultural
machinery may turn out the produce which
the State must have ? If we deliberately
' scrap ' vessels that have cost us immense
sums because they are out of date and there-
fore dangerous to trust to, ought we to be
less decided in this question of food, and
should we not put an end to a system of land
tenure which mocks at our national wishes
and thwarts our endeavours towards self-
preservation ?

The pig has always been looked upon as the
labourer's friend. We can make him of still
more use to the worker's family if we study
the best method of housing him at the foot
of the cottage garden. We do not wish to
see him stretched at full length upon the floor

THE STATE AS FARMER 87

of the cottage kitchen, but nicely housed in
a clean weather-tight pen in which he may
thrive under the best conditions. Are we
going to attain to this desirable state if every-
one is allowed to do what is right in his own
eyes ?

There is in the July number of The
Journal of the Board of Agriculture a very
interesting account by Mr. J. W. Welsh of
the Hitchin Bacon Factory. Mr. Welsh
describes just the kind of establishment I
am urging for every acre in the land, and
he supplies perfect evidence for my general
argument. He tells these damning facts :

Unfortunately the success of the factory as a
co-operative institution has been somewhat impaired
by the failure of the members to support it loyally.
The farmers show a marked disinclination to bind
themselves to send all their pigs to the factory, and
still often sell to local dealers whenever the price
offered is higher than that offered by the factory.
They fail to realise that their loyal support would
increase the dividends and apparently forget that
they have invested their capital in the factory. It
should be pointed out, moreover, that the competi-
tion of the factory has been instrumental in raising
the local prices by from 5 to j\ per cent., and that,

88 THE STATE AS FARMER

were this competition withdrawn, owing to the
failure of the factory, the prices obtained might be
considerably less than they now are.

Some difficulty has also been experienced in the
endeavour to induce the members to study the
requirements of the factory in breeding the right
type of pig, and in feeding to produce the best bacon.

But it is only fair to point out that such
disloyalty is inherent in the system itself.
Where there is a clashing of interests of this
kind — the capitalist, the huckster, the ring
of dealers, all from the nature of the case
trying to get the better of the man who has
a pig to sell — there must also be a call for
the thing named competition. These com-
petitors pose as being the friends of the
consumer, for they have to compete to get
the custom of the shop. But their activities
have succeeded in almost eliminating the pig
from the farmer's list of stock. These active
agents under a national scheme will find plenty
of work, but, as I have tried to show earlier,
it will be under conditions that are much
more useful to the State. The present system
is a chaotic one. There is no security that
there is any relation between areas and the

THE STATE AS FARMER 89

factory machinery available in those areas.
The personal equation goes for everything.

At this stage, however [says Mr. Welsh], the Bedford
members became less enthusiastic in their support
of the project, and it was decided by some of the
most enterprising of the Hitchin members to establish
the factory in their own district.

What has enthusiasm and enterprise to do with
cold scientific necessary work except to make
it easier ? They are worth just as much as
that enterprise was worth which went beyond
the Field-Marshal's orders at the front !

The question of meat is even more diffi-
cult and dangerous than that of bacon. In
Professors Leighton and Douglas' book on the
meat industry, the financial interests involved
are described as colossal, as indeed they are.
But these interests are not such as need scare
us : indeed, the same arrangements which
we are considering will enable the State to
control with greater effect and precision the
vast imports of foreign meat which require
such vigorous watching. What I have said
about bacon applies with still greater force to
beef and mutton. Inspection ends, it does

90 THE STATE AS FARMER

not begin, at the abattoir. Killing is not only
a source of wholesome food : it is the final
touch given to the most scientific farming
in several directions. It eliminates the cow
that is disgraced in the milk records and the
worthless fowl detected by the trap nest :
in a separate department it stamps out the
tuberculous animal steadily, persistently, and
without considering the financial loss. It used
to be a systematic operation in Germany
to sterilise diseased meat and sell it to the
poor, and there was just a hint here and there
that such disgusting methods might be adopted
here. I think we stopped even the inclination
to do this thing, but if we were pressed for
food the idea might be broached again. It is,
therefore, of the very highest importance to
go unflinchingly through the campaign against
disease, sparing neither expense nor pains to
obtain a clean bill of health. The control
of the State in all the stages of the growth
of meat is, in my opinion, imperative, in
order that the highest skill and medical
guidance may be devoted to the prevention,
rather than to the condemnation, of disease.
Is it necessary to compare a series of

THE STATE AS FARMER 91

district abattoirs — covering in well-thought-
out completeness the whole country — with
our present system ? I will take a passage
from ' The Meat Industry,' vol. iii. p. 815,
referring to Dr. Dittmar's Report, bearing
upon the latter.

Owing to the more advanced state of public
opinion in Scotland [it is said] there is a greater
proportion of slaughterhouses under proper control
than in either England or Ireland, and in order to
increase this number the local Government Board
might be empowered by law to call upon all local
authorities to provide such premises where it was
shown to their satisfaction to be required. The
plans of such buildings, as well as the arrangements
for administration and staffing, should be submitted
to the Board for approval. ' It is essential in the
interests of the public health that public slaughter-
houses should be instituted, and the cost of their
upkeep forms a legitimate charge against the public
health rate of the district they serve. A proportion,
if not all, of the expenditure can be met by means
of slaughterhouse dues, but, except in the large
centres of population, these sources of revenue will
not meet all the expenses of an efficient slaughter-
house service.' In Dr. Dittmar's opinion, boroughs
of over 6000 inhabitants are capable of supplying
efficient administration for meat inspection, and he
advises that in areas of four or five miles from any

92 THE STATE AS FARMER

part of the boundary of the borough there should
be no slaughterhouses except public ones.

Wherever a public slaughterhouse is erected, all
private slaughterhouses within the district served
by the public one should cease to exist.

It would be a distinct advantage if power were
given to two or more town councils to combine for
the purpose of providing a joint slaughterhouse for
their mutual use, there being no such power at present,
and similar powers might also be given to enable
combinations of districts to be formed for the same
purpose. Dr. Dittmar even suggests that the Local
Government Board should have power to compel
local authorities to combine for this purpose, as they
have in the case of providing hospital accommodation.

But our municipal authorities do not so
much want abattoirs as good meat for their
citizens, and I need scarcely remind anyone
that stock is not grown in the towns any more
than ripe strawberries grow in the sea. The
natural, decent, and safe system is for each
unit of area in the rural districts to be respon-
sible for the meat which issues from it, to see
that the stock is reared from healthy parents,
in sanitary surroundings and under the best
conditions. A really efficient system will
provide adequate feeding in at least the final

THE STATE AS FARMER 93

stage, absolutely humane and decent arrange-
ments for slaughter, perfect storing conditions,
and packing and delivery with adequate
trade marks which ensure that none of the
preceding labours and precautions are lost.
As we are considering this question from
the point of view of the fullest national supply
obtainable from the land, it does not seem
beside the mark to point out that such public
ownership as I am advocating provides the
readiest and simplest way of effecting any
large change or direction in management.
The Board of Agriculture would not then be
content only to supply valuable information
to those whom it might or might not concern.
It would be able to indicate directions in which
the various areas might unite to supply certain
needs of the public services, undertake sub-
ordinate factories for preserved goods, and
combine in experimental work.

I have raised my feeble voice for some
years now against the system which the
Development Commissioners thought well to
adopt in the matter of our horses. I urged
that the plan of giving prizes to the owners

94

THE STATE AS FARMER

of good horses might result in our best stock
reaching Germany and Austria at a lower
price than they were worth, and that we were
thus subsidising the export of our best instead
of forbidding it. I have also submitted that
the show system did nothing to secure the
best in a horse, for the best is what one may
describe as character, which a show, from the
very nature of the case, cannot prove. The
larger proposal I am now making, however?
includes the less. If the State is master of all
farming and breeding operations, it will become
its own master of the horse. Each unit will
require its own stud, and the country as
a whole can keep a check on the industry.
To save misunderstanding, I should perhaps
explain that I do not object to horses and
mares going from this country to the colonies
and other parts of the world. Horse-breeding
is an important industry that should be
encouraged. I only urge that the sums spent
by the Government should have a direct
bearing upon, and should include control
of, the said industry, in order that as far
as may be possible we shall always reserve
our best, that the foundation of it — both

THE STATE AS FARMER 95

our home and export industries — may be
saved.

We seem to be at the parting of the ways
in respect of horses generally. The motor
has supplanted them to a large extent, and
even in war, though the Boers used them with
great ingenuity, they do not seem to weigh
greatly in the present operations. But while
we have the dear creatures, let us make the
best that we can of them. How charming
would be our valley contests for the best in
all the classes !

It must always be satisfactory to the
poor to hear year by year that there is a
' glut ' of fruit without its price to them being
affected ! This year it is reassuring to know
that the Agricultural Organisation Society
is working at this glut and endeavouring to

conserve a portion of the plum, damson, apple, and
blackberry crop by pulping. It should be the aim
of all of us [says Mr. Harris in his circular] to try
to make use of some of the surpluses in this time of
national crisis in the interests of the consumers.
My suggestion is that those industrial co-operative
societies situated in fruit-growing areas should install
in a convenient building a fruit-pulping plant where

96 THE STATE AS FARMER

the fruit could be dealt with in the most economical
manner. All that will be necessary to turn out the
pulp is the building in which to pulp and storage
accommodation for the pulp when made, a boiler
to generate steam, and the plant necessary for the
pulping process. The building need not be a large
one and only of the simplest kind.

The cost of the actual pulping plant, which will
be capable of turning out about six or eight tons of
pulp daily, will be about £100. The pulp when
made is stored in either tins or casks. It can be
used for a variety of purposes such as confectionery
and home jam-making. It can be sold at a low
price ; it is an absolutely pure food, and it will keep
for years in a cool place.

Large quantities of pulp have been imported
yearly into this country from abroad, and these will
not be available for the next few years owing to the
war ; consequently jam will be dearer.

No sugars or preservatives are used in the manu-
facture of the article.

The proposal is one that should appeal to you
for two reasons :

1. It is a practical attempt to stop waste in a
valuable crop and to conserve a sound food.

2. It will place at the disposal of your members
a really wholesome and pure food product at a low
price.

Mr. K. L. Kenrick, in his ' Defence of the

THE STATE AS FARMER 97

Farmer ' (British Review, February 191 5) uses
these words :

Even with the present slovenly methods, a good
season may throw such quantities of fruit and
vegetables on the market that they scarcely pay for
the harvesting and carriage. Why apply scientific
methods to produce more ?

On an earlier page I have used the word
' rotting ' instead of the expression ' scarcely
pay for the harvesting,' and I have referred
to the fact that neglected fruit trees harbour
all sorts of vegetable and insect pests. The
scientific methods are required first to deal
with this dirty fruit farming, and next to
handle the crops in the way that the A.O.S.
— Mr. Harris and Mr. Press — are ever burning
to explain and describe. Grading, pulping,
and scientifically conducted transport and
sale would take a vast tonnage of this ' whole-
some and pure food product ' to thousands
of poor homes. Think what delight, which
itself is health, would come to the boys and
girls, what improved and varied diet to their
parents, if we could make use of the gluts
we already have in this natural way ! When
we have eradicated disease and pests the

98 THE STATE AS FARMER

crops will improve, and then we shall be
in a better position for applying ' scientific
methods ' to the whole of our great fruit areas
and for bringing an untold blessing to the
State. It is absolutely untrue that we can
afford to lose a single apple by neglect. It
is not only that millions want them who do
not get them. There are other millions who
do not use fruit and vegetables sufficiently
because they hardly know their value and
their economic use. They require to be
taught, because they are ignorant of it,
the truth of Mr. Harris's description of this
' really wholesome and pure food product.'

But no agency short of the State itself
can insist upon the planting and care of
orchards, the collecting of the crops and the
due grading, pulping, and prompt delivery
of them. In a well-organised depot there can
never be a ' glut ' of anything. We do not
speak of a glut when we have a well-eared
and thick field of wheat to reap and when
men and women spend long hours in bringing
about the due safety of the ripe sheaves.
We might have an abundant harvest of this
noble food, which is the natural companion

THE STATE AS FARMER 99

and supplement of bread, if we took the
matter up as a whole people. The great
co-operative societies are the agencies to
which Mr. Harris must appeal at the moment.
If he looks round, where is he to turn ? But
the co-operative societies are not national
enough for the work. If I may repeat
myself I would urge that after we have so
arranged matters that nothing is lost of the
present crops, we may still further perfect
our orchard and kitchen garden industry that
five times our present yield would be gained.
This revolution cannot be effected by any
power less than the State ; the co-operative
society, however, has shown the supreme
power how to go to work and has often
nobly refused to become a sweater itself.

The organised effort to produce the
cereals in abundance will be made only
when we have put entirely out of our heads
the question whether they will pay to grow.
Underlying the whole conception of State
farming there ought to be the final considera-
tions of safety and the average comfort of
the people. There is no real safety in the
present conditions ; there is little comfort ;

H 2

ioo THE STATE AS FARMER

and, as to educational influences and scientific
atmosphere, they are nearly absent. The
cereals have their appropriate place in all
good farming, and the surpluses from them,
after the bulk has been devoted to the direct
service of man, are of the greatest value for
the farm stock. By scientific cultivation
the yield can be increased and the qualities
improved, the land can be made more fertile
for its other crops, and stock of a more
valuable kind can be carried. Does the idea
appeal to anyone, tariff reformer or free
trader, of British acres devoted to sport,
landscape painters, and weeds just because
we are able from time to time to purchase
cheap wheat and mutton from abroad for
our large population ? Because we are so
fortunate as to be able to supplement our
own, is that any reason for destroying our
own by neglect and ignorant carelessness ?
I have to discuss the question of land tenure
because this vital matter is bound up with
our farming methods. But I ask in this
place whether we are our own masters or not ?
If we are free people, I contend that it cannot
be wise to allow our own land to decay simply

THE STATE AS FARMER 101

because another portion of the globe has some
miles of cheap wheat. If this wheat cannot
be received without making our own wheat
lands look cheaper, we are the subjects of a
grave hallucination. The rejection of benefits
from beyond the sea would be the act of a
suicide. But it does not follow that we
should be satisfied to ignore our own fertility.
For we are gainers in every way if we pro-
duce as much as possible from our own soil,
building up, with the sense of security such
produce imparts, a better-fed population and
a larger portion of it working on the land.

CHAPTER IV

In the earlier years of the Agricultural Organi-
sation Society its main work was directed to
the combination of farmers for the joint
purchase of feeding stuffs and fertilisers.
Every effort naturally takes the line of least
resistance, and the gombeen-man of Ireland
may have been useful as the awful ex-
ample. A distinct success in a minor matter
encourages the cautious to venture further,
and of late years the larger undertakings,
such as whole milk collection and distri-
bution, have been set on foot. The farming
fraternity which ignored, if it did not oppose,
the movement at first has recently been
asking, like Rosa Dartle, for information
and even for help. The society has now
enrolled 570 societies, but the list as given
does not quite do justice to the work. It

stands thus in the Report :

102

THE STATE AS FARMER 103

Societies for the supply of Requirements and

sale of Produce ..... 227

Dairy, Bottled Milk, and Cheese-making Societies 34

Small Holdings and Allotments Societies . 195
Agricultural Credit Societies . . . .58

Egg and Poultry Societies .... 24

Miscellaneous Societies ..... 29

Insurance Societies ..... 3

570

The list does less than justice to the
movement, because it often happens that a
society commences to work for one particular
purpose, but as time goes on it adds to its
activities several other objects. It is, how-
ever, still enrolled under its original designa-
tion, rather unfortunately, I venture to think,
for it hides to some extent the total volume
of business.

I think that it is generally recognised that
a mere fringe of the farming industry is yet
touched. It is not very difficult to appreciate
the difference which must exist in time, if
in nothing else, between a country gradually
coaxed into co-operative methods — here a
bit of milk collection, here a few eggs ; there
a credit society, and somewhere else insurance

104 THE STATE AS FARMER

— and all our valleys taking up the matter
in every shape and form. A complete valley
society would undertake the supply of require-
ments and sale of produce, dairying of every
kind, small holdings and allotments, credit
and insurance, eggs and poultry, bacon and
meat. It might have been supposed by
everyone except the very cleverest that the
requirements of land and the needs of com-
merce are very much the same whether that
land lies in Yorkshire or Lancashire, in the
West country or in Wales. When the State
makes it its business to examine the pro-
spects of producing a much larger volume
of food from its acres, it will be forced to
consider in what particular forms or social
conditions it can best bring about the settle-
ment in comfort of hardy vigorous workers
and their families in every district. But it
will never be required to ask the votes of
these citizens upon such questions as pig
clubs, credit societies, insurance, cheese-
making, and the like. It will institute, as
a matter of course, every agency that will
bring fertility to the land and prosperity to
the districts, and the petty organisations of

THE STATE AS FARMER 105

the dear down-trodden ones, who at present
take a sip rather gingerly at co-operative
methods, will give place to bolder designs
and true patriotic organisation towards
national success.

I should like to consider carefully the
Report of the A.O.S., in order that we may
gain some estimate of how far the movement
is likely to solve our agricultural food problem.
We all have good cause to remember how,
when the war came, all the old unsaleable
stock was brought down from the shelves
and hurried into the keeping of the nervous
householder. On this subject the A.O.S.
Report runs as follows :

It will be remembered that during the first days
of the war a sudden rise in prices took place. The
industrial co-operative societies rendered a great
service to the country in helping to steady prices and
preventing a much higher rise, such as might other-
wise have taken place. The agricultural co-operative
societies, on their side, showed a widespread desire
to assist towards the same end. Many of the societies
affiliated to the A.O.S. supply produce to co-operative
stores, and instances occurred where private dealers
offered inflated prices at the beginning of August
with a view to diverting their custom from the

106 THE STATE AS FARMER

stores which had previously taken their goods, but
without success, the societies preferring to forgo
the opportunity for exceptional profits in the interests
of their previous customers and of the public generally.
It thus became evident that if organisation on both sides
had been more extended, so that the stores could have
drawn from organised sources the bulk of those supplies
which can be produced at home, the steadying effect
upon prices would have been still more marked.

I have put into italics what looks like
the despairing cry of a society which has
worked nobly, and recently with government
assistance, to bring co-operation to the
farming fraternity. But the A.O.S. strikes
too feeble a note. It never claims for the
State the right to organise production and
distribution. It comes cap in hand, and
seems to admit that the farmer who does
a good thing for himself as well as for his
fellow-citizens should be looked upon as a
self-denying saint. War tells us, what we
ought to have insisted upon before, that the
production of food is a very vital and funda-
mental State affair, it is not a House of Lords
or a farmer's concern except as delegates of
the nation, and cannot be left to be attended
to or not at their pleasure. The A.O.S.,

THE STATE AS FARMER 107

even under a State subsidy, does not claim
the right to organise : it seems content to
go on just as if it were one of our usual
permissive Acts of Parliament which remain
unapplied because of the refusal of the baser
and more ignorant sort to move.

I have referred on an earlier page to the
efforts of the society in the direction of
fruit pulping. The following passage shows
how far behind the times we are :

At the time the war broke out, the fruit and
vegetable crop of this country was very abundant,
and there was every prospect of considerable waste
owing to lack of marketing facilities. The A.O.S.
judged it the moment for the development of the
industries of fruit-bottling and preserving, and of
fruit and vegetable drying, as this country had
hitherto been largely dependent on Germany for her
supplies of the products of these industries. Their
development would mean likewise the opening up
of a new source of employment for women. The
A.O.S. at once got into touch with the members
of the Cabinet Committee directly concerned
with questions of relief and unemployment, and a
Conference was arranged at which representative
growers and representatives of Agricultural Colleges,
A.O.S. affiliated societies, the Board of Agriculture,
and the Development Commission were present.

108 THE STATE AS FARMER

The outcome of this Conference was the formation
of a small committee to inaugurate experiments in
fruit bottling and fruit and vegetable drying, the
Development Commission promising financial assist-
ance. These experiments are being carried out at
Dunnington Heath and at Wye College. According
to a recent report there is reason to believe the
result will show that the industries in question
could be developed on satisfactory and profitable
lines and that opportunities may be opened up for
the establishment of co-operative societies in this
connection.

The Report goes on to show how the
subsidiary industry ot basket making has been
neglected, and how the growth of willow
and other trees would follow its revival.

Here we are again in presence of the
fundamental question of gluts and whether
it is possible for a country to have them.
In my own opinion the whole of this argument
' on profitable lines ' is beside the mark. Free
Trade may have introduced it, but Land
Tenure has been the cause of its nonsense
being talked and listened to. I cannot
conceive of our State really having gluts of
any kind, not even of children in Highland
valleys now denuded of them. The only

THE STATE AS FARMER 109

question for us to discuss is the adequate
means of harvesting all of our goodly fruits,
preserving them safely till they are required,
and distributing them fairly among the
people. We may then give God thanks ;
but it is mockery to hold Harvest Homes
and Thanksgiving Services under our present
system.

Mr. Harris refers, as I have said, to the
need for care in using up all our minor products
for such simple but useful things as cheap
baskets of all kinds. It is obvious that
occupations of this sort provide winter work
to many, and the growth of the raw material
furnishes an opening for still more labour
upon our bleak hillsides. But just imagine
the arguments and disputes, the pessimism
and vaticination that will be rife among those
who set themselves to study ' whether it
will pay to grow ' our osiers and poplars and
pines !

Just noting the most interesting fact
recorded in this Report, that our County
Councils are here and there giving ' cordial
support ' to the idea of providing expensive
machinery by co-operative means to farmers,

no THE STATE AS FARMER

I may urge that if we get as far as this, we
might surely begin to discuss with our larger
authorities the complete scheme. The matter
of transport is unquestionably a County
Council one, and the Report indicates how
the farmer was inconvenienced and injured
upon the outbreak of war, by ' the claims of
the Government upon the transit services.'
There is much food for thought in this feeble
complaint or querulousness. It is a common-
place, which even the newspapers admit, that
an army marches on its belly, and nothing
would have assisted us more ' on the outbreak
of war ' than a system which marshalled our
resources in home-grown produce. A steady
delivery from the headquarters of every
valley of food which could be estimated to
a nicety, delivered to a moment, and packed
in a condition suitable for commercial or
military handling, would have been an untold
boon to our commanders. Instead of the
chaotic management of ' gluts,' of which no
man knew the contents and none could
trust the condition, the daily delivery of
prime foods would have been part of the
regular requirements of the troops. The

THE STATE AS FARMER in

commissariat of soldier and citizen would
have marched in step, instead of getting in
each other's way.

I must apologise for quoting so freely
the A.O.S. Report, but it bears so directly
upon my subject and in my own opinion
strengthens my argument, that it is difficult
to resist using passages such as these :

It will be seen that the subjects which have been
treated in the preceding sections have all a direct
bearing upon the question of the increase of our home
food supplies, for it is only when additional production
can be made to pay that additional production can,
and will be, undertaken. Organisation has therefore
a very important bearing upon the increase of our
home food supplies, and for this reason the subject
has been much under the consideration of the Society
since the very outset of its work. In the early days
of the war, however, the question which occupied
the attention of the general public was not so much
the development of market supplies as the additional
production of vegetables for consumption in the
homes of the producers. Organisation would enable
those who wish to continue such additional cultiva-
tion to procure their seeds and other requirements
to the best advantage. But the chief concern of
the Society lies in endeavouring to place those who
produce foodstuffs for the market in such a position

ii2 THE STATE AS FARMER

that they may find an extension of production
sufficiently remunerative to enable them to under-
take and continue it. Under present circumstances,
producers are naturally loth to embark upon new
and costly experiments with a view of increasing
their produce unless they can feel a reasonable
assurance that this produce will find a sale when
once more subjected to the same competition as
that which preceded the war. At the very time last
year when the increased production of market garden
produce was being urged, gluts were occurring on
some of our principal markets which occasioned heavy
financial losses, and even, in some cases, serious
pecuniary embarrassment to small producers. This
demonstrated the risks under which alone increased
production could take place. Larger farmers, also,
who are in many instances severely handicapped
by the enhanced cost of feeding stuffs and fertilisers
and the means of production generally, find them-
selves in a somewhat precarious position, and the
present high prices and the high rate of interest make
it easier for them to find an immediate advantage in
actually decreasing their stock, than to sink their money
in directions which may not prove permanently
remunerative. It has thus become of the first
importance that attention should be more generally
directed to organisation as to the only means by
which large quantities of additional produce can be
placed on the market with a fair chance of adequate
remuneration. Granted organisation also, with all

THE STATE AS FARMER 113

the economies in production and in distribution which
it postulates, this remuneration would be obtained
compatibly with lowered prices to the consumer.
The Society, therefore, through the Press, and by
every means which presented itself, has endeavoured
to bring home this point of view to the public in the
hope that a wider extension of co-operation may be
the means of permanently lifting production to a
higher level, and developing our home resources in
the interests of both our city populations and of the
inhabitants of the countryside.

There is an immense amount of truth in
this pathetic argument, and much might be
done in the purely commercial direction if the
farmers would only fall into line. They will
not do so, and we have to remember that all
this organisation of local volunteers involves
the financing by them of the transport,
depots, machinery, and the like. It involves
also the crudest form of competition with
Free Trade and everlasting bickerings among
politicians. But the Report proceeds :

The problem which is always before the Governors
is how to make the expert knowledge, which is
focussed at headquarters, most readily and profitably
available for agriculturists all over the kingdom,
and it is obvious that at a time when agricultural

1

ii4 THE STATE AS FARMER

conditions are rapidly changing, it becomes more
important than ever to unify the movement in such
a way that there should be no agriculturist, however
humble or however remotely situated, who may not
be able to draw profit from the experience of the
movement as a whole, and to link his efforts with
those of his fellows all over the kingdom in order to
adjust his industry to new demands and to develop
it upon the best lines in the general interests of the
nation. Yet obviously it would be only advisable
to start a branch when sufficient local support was
forthcoming ; and, previously to the war, it was held
that, under ordinary circumstances, an income of
£300 guaranteed for three years raised locally from
voluntary sources justified the step. Now, however,
in view both of the increased need of the work and
the increased difficulty in raising voluntary funds,
the Governors feel it desirable to relax their require-
ments and to be prepared to start branches upon a
cheaper footing and less efficiently equipped than,
under ordinary circumstances, they would consider
desirable. It seems to them better that the work
should be attempted, even in the face of great
obstacles, than that the possibilities it offers should
be disregarded.

Taken as a whole, and studied with
impartiality, this Report is a more urgent
appeal for the State management that I
advocate than is my own more direct one.

THE STATE AS FARMER 115

The pressing of complete co-operation in a
small area rather than meagre co-operation
in a large one, the suggestion of a good whole-
time paid manager for a district rather than
a number of unpaid secretaries in the several
societies — all tend to the same end. If co-
operation can kill a glut in one place it can
do so everywhere, and the more complete
the organisation the less chance a glut has to
run amok. We all of us suffer.

It is not always realised how disadvantageous
gluts may prove not merely to producers but also
to consumers. If markets are overstocked, prices
fall to such an extent that the producers may fail
to receive prices sufficient to recoup them for the
cost of production ; this inevitably means that they
stop sending consignments and, in consequence,
consumers have often to pay inflated prices until
the market regains its normal position. It should,
however, be the aim of every co-operative society
to send forward, on behalf of its members, regular
consignments of uniform quality adjusted to the
demands of the market. It is also only by working
together that growers can meet successfully the
combinations of capital with which their business
is met, at every stage between the time when their
produce leaves the orchard or garden and the time
when it reaches the hands of the consumer.

1 2

n6 THE STATE AS FARMER

If the work of the Agricultural Organisa-
tion Society be considered with care and
thought, it is almost as sad to those who
love our land as a page of Jeremiah. To be
prepared with all the skill and experience
which has been gathered round the governors,
and then to find that a mere fraction of those
who are presumed to wish to till the land
welcome the guidance and assistance prof-
fered in the commercial side of the work, is
more than disappointing — it is humiliating.
It could not have been so great a failure
if the landlord had done his part. It
seems, therefore, as if there were now no
option before the State but to re-enter
into practical possession and apply the
A.O.S. principles uniformly over the whole
land.

Leaflet No. 197 of the Board of Agriculture
and Fisheries gives an account of Agricultural
Education and Research. It is a report of
which any Government might be proud,
although it is full of sadness to the thoughtful
man. It is sad because it represents the
piping of learning and experience to which the

THE STATE AS FARMER 117

farmer has not danced. It represents the ill-
paid exertions of a very valuable body of men
who, if they were given a free hand, could
soon bring vast volumes of additional produce
out of our home acres besides turning out
yearly a regiment of students prepared to
carry through the very wisest treatment of
the land. It is not possible to suggest a
subject of research or experiment which bears
on the question of British farming that is not
engaging the attention of our professors ; and,
in order that as much ground as possible
may be covered, efforts are being made to
plan out and co-ordinate the labours among
the various staffs. I have had the privilege
of visiting many of the colleges, but not all,
and the impression left upon me is one of
indignation with our land system which makes
so little use of its leaders and guides. If we
could bring ourselves to believe that land can
be private property and its mismanagement
a matter of indifference to the body of citizens,
we might shut our eyes to, and shrug our
shoulders at, our present state. But this is
impossible : the war has shown us how
imperative it is for everyone to feel his

u8 THE STATE AS FARMER

responsibilities and add his opinion to the
common stock.

What strikes one so forcibly in this matter
is the quiet patience with which our experts
plod along, ignoring the dead weight of ignor-
ance and apathy with which their work is
received. I ought of course to state that,
though I am speaking of those colleges with
which the Leaflet deals, I have in my mind
also those other similar institutions which
are outside its purview. In Agricultural
Research the pace is set, so to speak, by the
research students themselves. Dr. Russell,
Dr. Theobald, Dr. Golding, have no doubt
very clear ideas of the things they want to
know, and we may, the State may, leave them
to their work and listen with respect to
anything they may think to be of interest in
their discoveries. The man in the country
road has a very vague idea of the intensely
important questions the philosopher has to
investigate and if possible decide. And least
of all does he appreciate what endless labour
is undergone by every scientific searcher in
these inquiries which are sometimes fruitless.

But with advisory work the case is differ-

THE STATE AS FARMER 119

ent. It is here that our present arrangements
are weak. A man in one of the ten counties
in the midst of which Darwin's University is
situated might be anxious to know the origin
of life or the best way to produce fine butter
from a sawdust diet. It is not merely that
we should have to refer him in one case to
Professor Schiller and in the other to Dr.
Gilchrist, but the whole scheme is topsy-
turvy and wrong. Conundrums are no use
in our effort to make our lands yield their
increase. It is for the Professors and their
staffs to ask the questions, give instructions
about treatments, and see that these instruc-
tions are carefully carried out.

Persons desirous of obtaining advice [says the
Leaflet] on difficult agricultural questions should
communicate with the Advisory Officer at the
Institution for the area in which they reside. In
counties in which there is a County Agricultural
Organiser, agriculturists should communicate with
that officer in cases in which the assistance required
does not appear to be of a scientific or specially difficult
nature.

Does not this sound as if our scientific men
had been sorely tried ? It would be better

120 THE STATE AS FARMER

if our organisers — when we are real masters
of our own land — themselves alone appealed
to higher technical knowledge. And it will
be better still when we have demanded that
every citizen who desires to devote his life
to the land shall take his degree in land know-
ledge and get his diploma before he is allowed
' to practise?

Forestry is included in the Board of
Agriculture's scheme of education, and this
educational and advisory policy is still pursued
although the counties in solemn conclave,
unless my memory deceives me, have testified
to the Government that they cannot afford
to finance forests ! If county councils them-
selves cannot deal with an eighty-year scheme,
is it not time for the State, for every reason
and from every point of view, to resume
possession at once ?

The whole educational scheme which has
been taken in hand on behalf of agriculture
is, I fear, to a very large extent neither more
nor less than a farce. The most obvious
result of it until quite recently was simply
an ill-concealed sneer on the part of the farmer,
who boasted openly that he had no use for

THE STATE AS FARMER 121

education. Things are, no doubt, slightly
better now, and through co-operation the
farmer may see cause to respect the learned
manager. But the agricultural degree is not
yet as it should be — the only passport to the
management of land.

The Board of Agriculture is the kindest,
most long-suffering Department that any
State in any age has conceived. It is not
at present well housed, but that drawback
seems only to emphasise its simplicity and
bonhomie : any genuine inquirer can walk
in and have his case listened to with the
utmost courtesy by one or other member of
the secretary's staff. There is no need for me
here to enter upon debatable subjects. In a
few cases of the Board's action it may have
taken a line which other experts disapprove.
In general it seems to be actuated by wisdom
and guided by learning, but in science we are
never sure that the wisest and best has been
discovered.

The change that I am pressing upon public
attention is of an entirely different order from
such expert disagreements. The last thing I

122 THE STATE AS FARMER

would abolish anywhere are those doctors'
differences by means of which we all come
to good health. In a certain sense the
President of the Board of Agriculture has
always represented as nearly as possible the
person in the Cabinet who stood for land,
unless the arch-landlord himself were already
taken up with the Premiership, War, the
Admiralty or some other exalted office. Of
course time was when the landlord class took
all the offices and carried England through
for better or worse. It is the thing represented
by the President, then, that I wish to change.
I do not know that if we used all the tact that
is available in Parliament at the present time
we could make the change really palatable.
But I am sure that there is a very large minor-
ity who, though proud of their ancient tenure
of the land, would consent with a good grace
to new arrangements if it were shown that the
well-being of the State*, needed them. And
we should all rejoice if the change could be
made peacefully, because we want these more
eminent among our citizens to help towards
the success of the new scheme. I am inclined
to claim that a direct tenure of land from the

THE STATE AS FARMER 123

State is more in accord with the old feudal
holding than is the present usage. We might
keep, if it were desired, some of the ancient
tenures — a pair of spurs yearly, or a good fat
hen, and my favourite among them, a rose
yearly at the time of roses, as the romantic
rents, in addition to £3 an acre cash. But the
essential in it all is that every tenure — duke,
marquis, and yeoman — is of the King, and
no single tenure to be held by one citizen of
another. I want to make it plain before
speaking of the matter further that no real
ill is intended to anyone in the new arrange-
ments which the State must have.

CHAPTER V

The idea of private property in land is an
outrage upon the sense of citizenship. The
land-owning fellowship has been at immense
pains to make this fact clear to us all. The
landlord party has dinned into our ears that
the price of corn is too low : it has moaned
over the Repeal of the Corn Laws, and has
whined because the people were able to obtain
a cheap loaf. When one section of the com-
munity is distressed because another and
the larger section is relieved to some extent
from famine, there must be something wrong.
Little by little sops have been thrown to
agriculture, but nothing has been done which
was calculated to bring real prosperity to the
land. Nothing has been done because in
truth nothing could be done under the cir-
cumstances. The only cure which is visible,

a united State effort, has scarcely been ever

124

THE STATE AS FARMER 125

hinted at, and we have instead been legislating
for smallholders, minimum wages, and rural
housing in sheer desperation. But we are
determined not to see that it is a matter of
impossibility to go on with the present system
of land tenure. If the Repeal of the Corn
Laws chastised landlordism with whips, our
new legislation must do so with scorpions
when the land under present conditions is
called upon to bear the cost. And if in addi-
tion we run motor services, build depots,
keep a large staff of professors, and charge
these on the land, what will be the result ?
Ruin ; for the present system of management
knows no method but that of lower and lower
wages, cheaper and cheaper hovels, rotting
orchards, weedy fields, and slovenly marketing.
In other words, if we are to resuscitate agri-
culture we dare not commit all the fine
machinery of its working to the present
workers without instituting effective State
control.

But if we institute this State control and
make farming a success without resuming
possession of the soil, we are heaping up
prices, rents, and capital values, by our own

126 THE STATE AS FARMER

exertions, against ourselves. The valuation of
land has proceeded some distance, but until
that is completed our hands are paralysed.
And when it is completed without public
ownership, we shall be equally paralysed by
the new duty of appraising certain incre-
ments of value. And why should we as a
people secure only twenty per cent, of the
improvements that we have effected ? It
becomes imperative for this, and for another
more urgent reason that I shall refer to
immediately, to deal with public ownership
soon in such a way that the completion of the
valuation and the resumption of active posses-
sion by the State shall occur simultaneously.
When this great double event occurs its effect
will be that though the tenants will have
changed their landlords, as they do continu-
ally when an heir enters into possession,
the landlords themselves will have become
tenants too. It is probable — for we see
the carefulness exhibited in the Small Holdings
Act — that in a change so fundamental as
this there would be as little dislocation as
possible caused in these domestic tenures
where noble dwellings, the pride of many a

THE STATE AS FARMER 127

countryside, are involved. But the active
cultivation of the bulk of the land itself can
be attended to without delay and to the
detriment of no one. But on this point it is
necessary to be clear. When I say to the
detriment of no one, I mean that all that
anyone will lose will be the injurious power
of dictating to others, lording it over them,
treating them as of another order from
themselves.

At the present moment the supporters of

a duty on wheat must be in something like

a dilemma. They want us very properly to

be free from the necessity of leaning upon

Canada, the Argentine, and Russia. But they

could scarcely blame us if at this crisis we

decided to plough up their parks for wheat.

Let us consider this point. If there is any

truth in my contention in earlier pages that

the true method of farming is to make it as

far as possible self-contained and as little as

possible dependent upon outside help either

in feeding stuffs or in fertilisers, it will follow

naturally that wheat and all the cereals will

have their appointed places in the national

scheme. If a real pinch were to come we

128 THE STATE AS FARMER

might use the whole of the wheat crop for
human consumption by turning it into its
most nutritious as well as appetising form —
wholemeal bread. For practical purposes we
may consider that white bread represents
only seventy per cent, of the crop. In this
matter of food, therefore, we have a reserve
of thirty per cent, if necessity arose. And if
that necessity ever did arise we should never
return to our present foolish method of milling
and feeding. Wheat, then, receiving its lawful
place in agriculture in large or small areas
according to the district, we have it as a basis
for our own daily food, but its basis rests upon
a very full elaboration of all other farming
operations, meat, milk, and the rest.

Now, to carry out these operations pro-
perly, the scheme in any district must be
roughly decided upon at headquarters ; and
the size of farms, the class of farmer, and the
character of crop and stock must all fall into
line with the district object. Here we come
in contact with land tenure at the lower end
of the scale. At present matters are about
as awkwardly arranged as they possibly
can be. A man sees a piece of land that he

THE STATE AS FARMER 129

knows will suit him, and he applies to the
County Council for it. An elaborate series
of investigations takes place, valuers are
brought in, and rent is fixed. But it happens
that people cannot choose a piece of land out
of their neighbour's farm — or it may be their
late employer's holding — without a fine, to
be fixed by the said valuers, for severance.
And so the tendency of all such efforts to get
a small holding is towards a bad piece at a
high rent, or a good piece and an extravagant
fine. The majority of such applications fall
through. The whole is quite on a par with
all the other inconveniences of feudalism
grown mouldy. In the newer and better
system the authorities would be continually
working out holdings to suit both the land
and its treatment and the character of the
applicants for it.

One of the most important benefits
connected with the State ownership of land
is that such ownership solves the everlasting
problem and relieves the unending friction
of a tariff. We have during the last two
generations seen some remarkable changes in
the value of farm lands. The ever-shortening

K

i3o THE STATE AS FARMER

of the practical distance between the corn
lands of the earth has tended to equalise their
values. The lands which grew American
wheats tended to approximate in value to
the wheat lands at home, and naturally the
owners of the home lands suffered. But
they suffered in a bad cause. It is not to
the interest of the State that the popula-
tion of the agricultural districts should be
reduced to a fourth of the numbers because
the so-called owners choose to adopt a new
system of farming. I referred to this system
of farming at the smallest cost when I spoke
of the possibilities of the land. The rent
per acre is not the prime interest of any
State. Its prime interest is the number of
citizens it can support in comfort upon its
acres. The farmer is a secondary considera-
tion and is entitled to his comforts, too, for
management. But the owner, as such, is
useless to the State. The present owner is
different from his ancestors in two respects :
he does not perform the warlike and other
duties of the feudal times, and he interferes
more than he did of old with the economic
conditions of his ' fief.'

THE STATE AS FARMER 131

But, leaving all those useless questions of
history, we are compelled as a State to retake
possession of the soil because no other
controller of it can afford to carry through
all its necessary operations and face the
annual fluctuations in rent or profit. If
we take the working expenses — including a
comfortable wage, a habitable cottage,
education, and the rest for the labourer — as
to some extent fixed, and if in view of free
trade the prices obtainable fluctuate — for
we have to provide high-class food for our
urban and manufacturing populations — the
profit, that is the rent, of the land must
fluctuate too. And, seeing that the interest
on the land stock must be regular, it follows
next that a margin must be provided to
deal with the fluctuating profits. The finance
may be worked out in different ways, but
it is incontrovertible that the State only
can undertake the development of land to
its full capacity. Any other system must
be unjust to one or other class among us.
The labourer or the farmer or the town dweller
must suffer, for their interests under an
individualist system clash. The owner of

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132 THE STATE AS FARMER

the deer forest or park is the very first to
scream for conscription when war comes.
He makes desolate the region where thews
and sinews, hardihood and valour flourish,
and then coolly asks the State to save him
by taking men by force from other places
whither they have been driven by his
disastrous feudal powers. In fact the present
system is its own reductio ad absurdum. It
leads to depopulation, as many of us have
said for years, and to the military dangers of
depopulation ; and now the war has come
to prove our case finally and absolutely.
We want men, and in these places where we
should have the best we have neither men
nor food to give them sufficient for strength.

Just look fixedly at what the landowner
has wanted all these years. He has wanted
a duty on corn so that without improving
the yield he might put a heavier price upon
the citizen's loaf and exact a higher rent for
himself. He has made no effort to keep
up with the times. He does not exact from
his tenant, with all his exactions, even
loyalty to co-operation. If that had been
made a condition of every tenancy there

THE STATE AS FARMER 133

might have been some hope of the present
regime, but, when the figures are looked at,
the student must, however sympathetic he
may be, give up our ancient nobility and
gentry in this connection with a sigh.

They are now looking feverishly for vacant
spaces from which to supply the country's
need for food !

The land, then, and its annual value, which
will change not only with our own seasons
but in sympathy with those of the whole world,
when made public property in the real sense,
will exert a remarkable influence upon our
new life. No one will say henceforward that
' it does not pay to do this or that,' but rather
' how can we work the land so that it may be
most useful to all the members of the State ? '
The goods that can be brought here as a
surplus from other countries will flow round
the island, but will only penetrate into the
inner parts of it when they represent produce
which cannot be grown here. The Siberian
egg will not be found under the new conditions
in the wholesale co-operative store, as it is
now, side by side with the egg of the parish
where the store is. The factor of transport

134 THE STATE AS FARMER

will put an end to such anomalies as this.
For we do not intend to waste money on use-
less freights. The co-operation which does
not at present probably touch one per cent,
of our farms in the matter of collection and
distribution of produce will be an essential
condition of farming. A smallholder will
find no land granted to him by the State
if he declines to adhere to the general
conditions of his district and pool his produce
at the depot.

As to the finance of public ownership
there need be no great difference of opinion
as long as two fundamental principles are
made operative. The first is that every
tenant of the State must loyally fall in with
the State objects and methods while giving
individual contributions of study and experi-
ence to the common stock. The second is
that in return for the State's guarantee of
a fixed return on capital the whole of any
increment in value must accrue to the com-
monwealth. The capital involved will be
fixed by the valuation which is in progress.
The possession of the land must be exchanged
for national land stock bearing interest at a

THE STATE AS FARMER 135

rate which the experts must decide. The
analogy of the War Loan will help us here.
The State must have the only option available :
it must have the right to pay off at par any
sum at any time by some process of drawings,
so that in the course of the decades the
country may be once more free. By this
provision the public will obtain the benefit
of cheap money, and the land will be spared
the disgrace of becoming a stock exchange
shuttlecock. By a certain ease in relation
to money the less advanced portions of our
agricultural areas can be brought up in
condition, important national works can be
carried through, and the social as well as the
scientific well-being of our rural areas can be
accomplished. The various local authorities
will have enough to do with structures to
grudge the land itself to the nation as a
whole. But it is to these authorities that we
shall look for the details of management that
will be so interesting to observe.

The exchange of land for land stock
having been accomplished, the holders of the
latter will have no necessary connection with
the former. A situation similar to this has

136 THE STATE AS FARMER

been reached often, — I am not referring to
Ireland, — in cases where the land from which
revenue was drawn to support valuable seats
became insufficient for the purpose. In fact
it has always been impossible so to tie up
property that the owner of an historic mansion
should have enough to live upon in it, although
certain methods of getting the better of the
moneylender have been devised. But when
the State resumes possession the ordinary
requirements of society for paying one's
way will be demanded, and the result will be
that a noble name in a noble house, genera-
tion after generation, will stand for much more
than it does at present. It will mean finan-
cial rectitude equivalent to thrift in lower
stations, and it may come to mean families
whose tradition is useful service to the State
and on the land.

We have all come across cases in the farmer
class where residence on the same land is
claimed from the time before the Conqueror.
Combined with age of occupancy is often seen
a capacity for producing rancid butter and
such products that are of no practical value
to the State. These citizens will be removed

THE STATE AS FARMER 137

from the cosy seclusion of great landlords
who have had a sentimental interest in the
ancient tenure into the fierce light that beats
upon them from the Agricultural College
and the Co-operative Depot. It is quite
possible that the sons of these will welcome
this fierce light and remain in their tenures
to apply all the modern methods and lead
the new crusade. But this will depend upon
themselves, not upon any hereditary right to
destroy the kindly fruits of the earth by
ignorance and lazy habits. It is in the
highest degree probable that the new activity
will be welcomed everywhere and that cheer-
fulness will reign where despondency has
held sway. The whining and moaning at the
labourer's wages of 15s., the determination
to obtain seats on rural councils in order to
be able to oppose adequate housing and water
supplies, the indifference to milk records and
pig breeding, and the smile of contempt at
all scientific efforts will in all probability
disappear when the mouldy traditions of the
past are laid to rest with feudalism.

There are some strenuous farmers who will
need guidance, too, in another direction to

138 THE STATE AS FARMER

which I should have referred, perhaps, on an
earlier page. The effort to secure the whole-
milk trade in a district calls out the business
capacity of many farmers who serve the
State ' indifferently well ' in all respects
except perhaps one. In order to reach a
certain uniformity in organisation to the one
specific purpose of milk, they buy all their
cows and sell them when dry ;-o the butcher.
In reply to remonstrances they refuse to make
any distinctions, milk records are meaning-
less in their administration ; they buy the
best cows they can and then sell them to be
killed. A policy such as this is disastrous in
the extreme, and if it were general it would
lead to the destruction of our best herds.
In fact these strenuous ones can only exist
through the apathy of the rest of us, for they
sample of our best at fairs, markets, and
private farms, and preserve none, not even the
1200-gallon cow. A farmer of this kind is
out of place on a farm of his own. He is
invaluable in the management of a dairy farm,
in the feeding and general treatment of his
herd ; in the cleanly milking and distribution
of the milk. But he should be supplied with

THE STATE AS FARMER 139

the cows he uses, and these should when dry
be very carefully selected either for the
butcher or for continuing the race of heavy
milkers. No doubt he would consent to
institute a series of milk records, and perhaps
would come 'gradually to recognise that our
future in this direction depends upon our
breeding only from the best, and preserving
such with every effort, sympathy, and care.

Our system of land tenure, then, has led
to a type of farming which can only result in
ruin when the stress comes. As we are able
to receive so much from other countries,
and seeing that so many country seats can be
kept up by Stock Exchange winners rather
than by the produce of the land in the midst
of which they are set, we have lost account of
the real doings of those to whom the land is
entrusted, and we have ignored the ordinary
business needs of those who want to connect
their products with the markets that are
the best in the world. Are we to allow this
system to continue ? The magic of property
is simply and solely the magic of pride. To
the real workers on the land the fact that they
need not be burdened with this magic has a

140 THE STATE AS FARMER

more heavenly sound. When it comes to the
co-operative working by honest, reliable men
and women, it is remarkable to how small a
point the necessities of finance dwindle in this
age of banks. We like to see everyone in
loving residence upon the land, millionaire
and peasant alike. But the full scientific
treatment of our acres must be secured, and
consequently those who in any way interfere
with this efficient working must be satisfied
with those provisions that can be made after
the land itself has received its due care.

CHAPTER VI

The subject of the land cannot be exhausted
without reference to the most important de-
tails of the labourer's cottage and his wage. In
the discussion of the problem it is desirable to
state as far as possible the point of view which
is being taken. When Browning discusses
his ' Ring and the Book ' he does so by telling
the story from the various points of view of the
actors engaged in it. I am not attempting
anything so ambitious in regard to the land.
I have said that the power of a State depends
upon the number, character, and strength of
its citizens as well as upon the wisdom of its
rulers. I am, therefore, intent upon multiply-
ing the number of persons who are able to live
a strenuous, happy, and useful life upon the
acres which we have to till. I am ignoring
the ' k;cking out of the nest ' theory : I think

we ,an build up a British Empire without

i4i

142 THE STATE AS FARMER

making Irishmen irreconcilable and farm
labourers outlaws. The younger sons will
always be asking for passports into far
countries without squalid incentives to travel.
I therefore take the point of view of land for
all who will do justice to it.

The well-being of the labourer, therefore, is
bound up with the State management of the
land. We have to decide whether in view
of the light that the war has let into our
councils we can afford to go on in our recent
methods as regards our working population.
Are we as a people prepared to allow a small
minority of our citizens so to act that those
other citizens who work the land are to be
starved in the matter of food and made squalid
by the disgraceful provision of houses ? If
we are not prepared to allow any longer the
dangerous destruction of our rural population
by impossible conditions, we are in my opinion
driven to a positive policy of definite State
management. If there is one fact more certain
than another it is that those who are respon-
sible for the present management have re-
iterated— in every place and at every time,
in season and out of season, sometimes with

THE STATE AS FARMER 143

sorrow and sometimes with indignation —
that they cannot pay a higher wage or provide
more decent accommodation for the rural
labourer. This being the case, they must
stand aside. We need these men and women
in time of peace to produce for us as much
food as they possibly can of the best quality.
And in war we need them, not only to keep
working at this more urgently necessary work,
but also to contribute some of their most
active and smart workers to the general fund
of fighting men.

To make the land produce as much as
possible we require more workers on it. It
is not easy to conceive of production so
successful that we can feed ourselves without
imports. But it is possible that we might
so improve the total that under extreme
pressure we might preserve our existence
temporarily without help, whereas it would
be impossible to do so under present condi-
tions. The problem will have to be solved
some day, because we cannot to an unlimited
extent reckon on a succession of virgin wheat-
lands beyond the sea to save us from famine
for ever. It is wonderful what the land can

i44 THE STATE AS FARMER

do when put to the test. But under present
circumstances we need not press it to its
utmost capacity. We need only begin the
operation by setting on foot the various
agencies to which I have alluded and get
decent dwellings and fair wages for those
who have neither at the present time. We
shall then have formed a nucleus for a new
kind of rural population, and shall have
established some of the necessary reforms
of rural life.

The objectionable features at the present
time in rural housing are chiefly two. The
cottage is not fit for those who dwell in it,
and it is a sort of relic of the truck system ;
wages are paid in terms of a cottage, and fixity
of tenure depends upon the labourer ' giving
satisfaction ' to its owner as one of his ' hinds.'
We must, therefore, have a large number of
better and more wholesome cottages free in
their tenure from all connection with the
employer, unless the employer be the State
itself. This involves the increase of wages
to pay a higher rent. Perhaps there has been
no persecution in England more unfeeling
than that exhibited in the housing question.

THE STATE AS FARMER 145

To have to walk miles after a long day's work
to reach a dismal over-rented cottage is
cruelty and a disgrace. There is no value
or training of any kind in such heartless
conditions. The farm hand is entitled as
much as the best among us to his happy and
convenient ' fireside clime,' and if there were
no other reason for State employment we
have one here. The miserable conditions of
the present system in the matter of housing
prove that it has been weighed in the balance
and found wanting.

I have referred to a certain chaotic system
in farming which consists in doing the least
to the land, using as few labourers as pos-
sible, and avoiding all technical trades such
as milking and cheese-making. Squalor is
usually connected with urban slums in the
minds of students : its worst examples may,
however, be found in those farming districts
which set before themselves that unspeak-
able trade policy of a desert peace. I am
out to coax my fellow-citizens, not to rail at
them ; so I must say as little as possible about
the infamy of this so-called farming. But
I am obliged to refer to it again and again

146 THE STATE AS FARMER

because the real farming which I hope to see
constituted by the State at an early time
cannot begin until we recognise that the farm
labourer is a member of a very skilled trade,
and should be under rules and regulations of
his own as strict as the great railway and
engineering unions are. From some points
of view the land workers' union ought to be
the stricter of the two. The railwayman or
engineer has little need to establish safeguards
against the abominations of squalid property.
With the rural expert it is only from squalid
cottages that he can emerge to demand the
usual decencies of life. I am not a politician,
but it is obvious to all who look at the question
that the rural labourers must form a strong
union if it is only to assist the county councils
and their medical officers to destroy the present
evil influences of parish councils, and man
them afresh and aright. No country has ever
succeeded which allowed its own laws to be
stultified : the permissive which plays into
the hands of the retrograde is only another
form of treachery against the State.

The very urgent question of housing,
then, hangs upon the due discharge of our
multifarious farm duties by competent men

THE STATE AS FARMER 147

and women under suitable conditions. The
man who has to deal with manures, sheep
dips, the mothers and young of the stock, with
milking cows and feeding stuffs, in all weathers
and upon all soils, does not need less oppor-
tunities of cleanliness and health, but more
than his neighbours do. It may be possible to
divide the jobs, but on a farm this can only be
done to a limited extent, and each one must be
prepared at certain times to do his or her
colleague's work. But if we are really going to
improve our methods upon the land, and if we
hope to attract and keep a due proportion
of our best people there, we have before us a
great and urgent duty in this matter of housing.
The first practical difficulty lies in the fact
that we cannot design and get estimates for
a series of cottages of different sizes which
will be suitable for any village in any county.
Materials vary so much and price with them.
But an agency such as the Rural Housing
Organization Society can do a great deal
towards the establishment of a public taste
and standard. I think that I may venture
to say, without much fear of contradiction,
that the difference between awkwardness
and convenience, between beauty and Ugli-

ly 2

148 THE STATE AS FARMER

ness, between health and the insanitary, is not
a question so much of money as of care and
thought and simple common sense. There
must, of course, be a minimum for decency,
but it is better to have a series of different
sized cottages as uniform as coins in their
essential features than to allow each fresh
pair or short terrace to be the sport of every
new architect's whim.

Parliament may have to re-define the terms
of air-space ; and medical men will have to
help us to design that awkward requirement,
the invalid's chamber. We all know from
experience that the mother has not yet
learnt in many cases to part from her invalid
for the invalid's sake as well as for that
of the brothers and sisters. A flourishing
countryside will soon solve this problem :
a squalid hamlet never could have done so
from the nature of the case. The old house-
place will, I hope, be kept by the experts as
long as it is made impossible to deal with
milk and other products in it. The separate
rooms arc more desirable upstairs.

Spolttsu'ooae &■ Co. Ltd., Primers, Colchester, London and Eton.

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