180 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



tion8 for the production and sale of wheat, with an inoperative 

 guarantee at one end of its interference, and a regulation wage for 

 labourers at the other. If that could be done, possibly, rents also 

 might be tarifated " from above," a new tilting ground would be 

 opened for the opposed interests, one of which is, on the ground of 

 the ruling high price of corn, pleased to charge the farmer with 

 habitual " profiteering," whereas the other sheds tears over the 

 alleged disappearance of all profit from husbandry. But it 

 would be some set-off to know that ; so provided with material 

 modern " Cockers " might be afforded the satisfaction of minutely 

 calculating what breadth of land precisely it will be necessary to 

 sow with wheat in order to supply the nation with bread-corn, and 

 at what price farmers might be allowed to sell that gift of Ceres. 

 That would be a substantial further advance towards nationalisation 

 of the soil and its cultivation, and as substantial a step towards 

 sterilising agriculture. For if every item in farming business were 

 officially regulated and watched over in such a way, all stimulus 

 to " do better," which is the lifeblood of business, would be hope- 

 lessly taken away. Tarifated business excites no interest, stimu- 

 lates no energy, is powerless to increase production and results in no 

 progress. 



As it happens, it is quite impossible to ascertain such " normal 

 costing." The cost of producing a quarter of wheat depends upon 

 many factors — soil, " heart," season and, not least, personal skill 

 in cultivation — and, in consequence of this fact, varies greatly in 

 different cases. And even the attempt made to ascertain it as a 

 fixed quantity is, from a practical point of view, a mistake. For 

 farming is, as we are now fond of insisting, a " business," like all 

 other descriptions of business — banking, manufacturing, dealing — 

 success in which is proportioned to the skill and savoir faire of the 

 man who practises it, and to his energy in " going one better " than 

 his fellows — reducing cost, it may be ; or else improving output, 

 quantitatively or qualitatively, so as to net a better gain. James 

 Hope knew how to do this in the matter of potatoes ; Bates and 

 Booth knew it in the matter of breeding Shorthorns. That is how 

 business progresses, not by stereotyping processes, outputs and costs ; 

 and that is how a country arrives from the, say, 15 bushels of wheat 

 per acre produced on an average in a country like the United States, 

 at our 30, or in a particular exceptional case, 58 bushels ; and that 

 is what the country wants. 



But, leaving the point of policy out of consideration, to arrive at 

 a " normal " costing is, as a matter of fact, impossible, and is bound 



