NEED OF ORGANISATION 75 



and rooty crops interspersed, to put the soil into better condition, 

 shade it and enable it to accumulate " heart," while providing the 

 nation with the other articles of food required for healthy sustenta- 

 tion of human life at the same time. 



It is not protection that agriculture wants — worn-out nostrum 

 that it is — but Mr. Roosevelt's " Better Farming " and, to turn that 

 to the best possible account, organisation. Organisation will not, 

 to be sure, raise the market price of wheat, but it will ensure to each 

 producer a better price for his own particular lot and enable him to 

 produce it at less cost. The first — by bringing it to the proper market 

 at the proper time through expert agency, in a much improved 

 condition, that is clean, graded, standardised, of the proper " breed." 

 The second — by teaching him to husband that now most costly 

 commodity of labour and other outgoings. That is how the Ameri- 

 can fruit-grower, co-operative wool-grader, elevator-man, and how 

 the French raiser of early produce make their profit, and the land 

 prospers under the treatment, instead of becoming exhausted. 



It is time that we forsook the antiquce vice of past centuries, now 



churned by unduly prolonged use into impassable mud, as they 



are, for new methods. For there are writings on the wall, which 



warn us that agriculture will have to set its house in order if the 



classes now interested in it are to retain their foothold. Already 



by the side of the tumult of labour unrest we hear mutterings of a 



coming storm, such as threatens to deprive the favoured class of 



landowners of their remaining privileges. After the report upon 



the coal industry, after the case made out — even by such a strong 



opponent of nationalisation for its own sake as is Mr. Acworth — for 



the nationalisation of railways, there can be little question that 



before long — unless agriculture sets its house thoroughly in order 



according to modern knowledge, so as to make it substantially 



more productive — nationalisation of the soil — not necessarily in its 



cultivation, but in its primary ownership, as an endowment for the 



nation — will come upon the carpet as a question calling for present 



settlement. 



We have already the great co-operative interest with its four 

 millions of adherents strongly protesting, not only against individual 

 ownership of land, but — quite mistakenly, I think — also against 

 individual exploitation of it. Having fully adopted the socialist 

 programme of the consumer's interest reigning supreme, and all 

 our instruments of production, commerce and transport being placed 

 in possession of the community, they openly argue now in favour 

 of collective ownership of land by the consumers, and cultivation 



