WORKSHOP PLUS LAND. 211 



unreclaimed land in New Zealand. On his 

 farm he keeps a herd of 120 cows and has 

 a Lawrence-Kennedy milking machine with 

 which to milk them, and yet, I suppose, in 

 the very heart of the English county, where 

 this machine is actually made, few farmers 

 are using it. 



Is it not through the lack of capital rather 

 than the low price of corn that the English 

 farmer still uses machines of an out-of-date 

 pattern ? For it must be remembered that 

 when the English farmer had to face the 

 competition of the new world where wheat 

 could be produced on virgin soil without 

 manure, rented at prairie value, rents at home 

 began to rise in 1852-53 and tended upwards 

 until 1880, and even for several years after 

 this our farmers continued to take farms at 

 high and even impossible rents. 



Durnig this long period of thirty years, the 

 surplus wealth derived from farm lands went 

 towards making capital, not for the farmer, but 

 for the landlord. Now, with reduced rents, it 

 is the owner of agricultural land who is 

 making slow financial progress, whilst it is the 

 farmer with the aid of newly invented, labour- 

 saving machinery who has the opportunity 



