4 A UNIONIST AGRICULTURAL POLICY 



of employment per 1,000 acres in Denmark, a 

 country where conditions are by no means dis- 

 similar to our own, we shall find that Denmark 

 employs upwards of 75 persons per 1,000 acres. 

 If intensive methods of cultivation are more 

 generally employed, there is no reason why the 

 land of Great Britain should not find occupation 

 and employment for a corresponding number of 

 people. To put the contention in its most 

 modest form, we might expect an increase of 

 at least 500,000 men in the agricultural popula- 

 tion, either as labourers or small-holders. Nor 

 is such a view without justification from the 

 history of the past. In 1851, in England and 

 Wales, 1,712,739 persons were engaged in agri- 

 culture ; fifty years later this number had fallen 

 to 1,192,167, a decline of more than half a 

 million. There seems to be no reason why, if 

 prices remain steady, and if methods of cultivation 

 are improved, we should not be able to revert 

 to the original figure. The importance of this 

 from the point of view of labour and production 

 is obvious. It has been calculated that the 

 annual food production per labourer is ^129. 

 On this basis, the increased labouring population 

 would increase the production of home-grown 

 food by upwards of ^80,000,000 per annum. 

 This is a decidedly conservative estimate, as the 

 present average output is based very largely 

 on an extensive system of cultivation, and as 



