BUBAL BECONSTBUCTION 



Chapter I 

 THE CALL FOE RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



The country is out for economic and social reconstruction in all 

 parts of its complex machinery. Commerce, transports, credit, 

 trade, everything is being subjected to the statesman's and the 

 expert's scrutiny, with a view to providing new and better organisa- 

 tion for organisation old and defective. Reorganisation — and in 

 many points of the system, where as yet there is none, fresh 

 organisation — to repair the effects of long-standing neglect, has 

 indeed become the mot d'ordre of the day. 



In no part of our system assuredly is there more urgent and more 

 crying need for new organisation than in our rural economy, in which 

 legislation and custom have left overmuch chaos. 



With respect to one branch of our rural economy, indeed, scarcely 

 any more requires to be said. The need of reorganisation of our 

 agriculture is universally recognised. The world rings with a demand 

 for it, coming from all quarters and advanced from more points of 

 view than one. For, on the point of what national agriculture 

 should be, and what shape it should be made to take, opinions differ 

 widely. But reorganisation of some sort every one asks for. 



However, highly important as unquestionably agriculture is, 

 agriculture, after all, represents only one branch of rural economy, 

 and that, from a human point of view, not the most significant. 

 For it stands, after all, only for a means to an end, not for the end 

 itself. For the nation it constitutes part of its great national com- 

 missariat, which feeds, but does not fight or work. To those engaged 

 in it, it represents employment, the main employment, by a long 

 way, of the rural population, but still only a stepping stone to the 

 gain of their daily bread and to ultimate prosperity. Now the folk 

 to be given employment to and to be made prosperous must 

 obviously count for more in the balance than their employment. 

 Therefore, as the younger Pliny has it, even higher consideration is 

 due to the rural population than to the calling in which they find 

 their employment and the produce which results from it. Men, as 

 he puts it, must count for more than wheat. 



R.R. B 



