84 BIOLOGICAL PROBLEMS 



It is admirable that municipal government should 

 have splendid systems of tramways to convey the 

 tired workmen from the factories to their homes in 

 the suburbs, but that is no reason why we should 

 be practically without any systems of light railways 

 to bring the bulky produce of farmers working in 

 remote districts from the land into the town. Are the 

 British public aware that it used often to cost more to 

 send 500 pounds of bread-stuff from one part of an 

 English county to another than it used to cost to send 

 it from the plains of the Old World to the big ports 

 of our island home? If they know it, do they realize 

 what it means? I hear to-day people talking of the 

 wickedness of farmers feeding barley meal to their 

 pigs. I shall, if I live till December, have been lec- 

 turing to farmers and agricultural students for twenty 

 years. For the first five years of that time it was my 

 duty to tell farmers how foolish it was of them not to 

 feed their wheat to swine. Wheat, which then was 

 round about 25^. for 500 pounds, cost so large a pro- 

 portion of its value to deliver that it was the right 

 policy to let it go to market in the concentrated form 

 of pork. 



I could keep you here all night talking of our griev- 

 ances, but let me now turn to two suggested remedies 

 that loom large in the mind of strategists thinking of 

 the future, i.e. small-holdings and industrial farms. 



I will begin by saying we must, in any perfect 

 system of national agriculture, have enough small- 

 holdings to fulfil certain demands. 



There is, first of all, the local need of a small 

 farmer to supply such things as milk, eggs, vege- 

 tables, &c., to a small village community. Such 

 men must be encouraged more and more, and not 

 suppressed, as was often the case before the Small 

 Holdings Act was passed. 



