10 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



to the best of our possibilities, under moral, if not always statutory, 

 compulsion. That has served our turn, but we have our fields full 

 of couch, foul in other respects, and exhausted ; and there is good 

 reason to apprehend that Professor Wibberley was not altogether 

 wrong when he warned farmers that they would find out what it 

 means to have seriously reduced the stock of valuable " humus " 

 in the soil — " humus " which, with Jethro Tull's and Saussure's 

 theories having come into the ascendant once more, under M. Pion- 

 Gaud's successful experiments, promises to claim afresh the con- 

 sideration due to it. However, all that does not appear to affect 

 the old school. In truth, to a great extent the lessons of the War 

 appear lost upon our large farmers and their spokesmen — not a few 

 of whom may scent in the " guarantee," promised as an inducement 

 to grow wheat in preference to other crops, the herald of returning 

 protection. Our larger farmers have indeed learnt, after a long 

 time of hesitation, to appreciate labour-saving machinery. They 

 began, two years after the conclusion of the War, to take even 

 to the use of tractors, and high prices have driven them perforce 

 into favouring the most elementary form of co-operation — their 

 indispensable ally in their struggle with modern conditions — but 

 only in the very egotistical shape of purchasing requisites — above 

 all things fertilisers, feedingstuffs and seeds — in common, as a 

 matter of economy become necessary. That is co-operation reduced 

 to the narrow measure in which, if Milton tells us aright, the then 

 still uncondemned Mammon admired " Heaven," on the ground of 

 its precious gold pavement. If co-operation is genuinely to benefit 

 agriculture, it will have to be reared up on a broader and stronger 

 foundation. Those who have urged farmers to this are pleased to 

 make a great boast of such success. But there is in truth not much 

 "co-operation" in it. It is simply "combination" — for the con- 

 tinuance of which there is no sort of guarantee — for the purpose 

 of saving a few pounds on a specific transaction, just as travellers 

 may combine to hire a conveyance in common for a particular 

 journey. However, on the other hand, in all other matters farmers 

 appear to be dropping back comfortably into their old ways. There 

 is wheat growing; there is "lazy" farming — millions of acres going 

 back to poor grass ; there are all the old shortcomings. As regards 

 wheat, experiments have taught us that we can, to put it in a 

 paradoxical way, produce more wheat by growing less of it — that is, 

 produce more quantity by assigning less area and less frequent 

 returns of it — while that plan will at the same time give us amply 

 more vegetable, and, through it, more animal produce. And experi- 



