LABOUR 255 



country. There are vast stretches of land on which, even if it were 

 practicable, it would not be at all desirable. We must needs have a 

 certain proportion of larger ordinary capitalist farming — farming 

 for the production of our recognised staple agricultural produce, 

 which the small producer is unquestionably at a disadvantage in 

 producing. The country needs it. If, on the one hand, tempted 

 by exceptional price for their land, and disgusted with the prospect 

 of dear labour, landlords are vacating their "places," selling their 

 estates — or else, at any rate, reducing their domains — on the other, 

 substantial cultivating farmers must remain — whether as tenants 

 or as owners, and they must inevitably continue dependent upon 

 labour. Ineptly conceived, and irritatingly framed, and to a con- 

 siderable extent in direct opposition to common sense, as the new 

 regulations as to wages are — and, therefore, requiring the very 

 frequent revisions and emendations which we see in progress, county 

 by county — we have no occasion to allow ourselves to be excessively 

 frightened by the predictions about high wages driving farmers 

 into laying down land indiscriminately and permanently under 

 grass, as a means of saving expense and avoiding disappointment at 

 interrupted work. To a great extent the evil of shortened hours 

 may be expected to be eventually met by improved organisation and 

 a better understanding effected, once the bubbling must of long 

 waited-for freedom has settled down to clear liquor. And the 

 apparent extravagance of high wages — with the sword of Damocles, 

 of authoritative interference to the extent of seizure of their farms 

 by county executive committees for quasi-nationalised exploitation, 

 perpetually dangled over farmers' heads — may be expected to 

 become sooner or later neutralised by better methods of cultivation, 

 with heavier crops remunerating the farmer for his larger outlay. 

 Besides, we have a new race of cultivators pressing into the ranks of 

 substantial occupiers— men with business training, business instincts, 

 business ambitions, and business enterprise — men who are not likely 

 wilfully to condemn the " talent " which Providence has entrust© I to 

 them to unproductiveness, by burying it lazily in the ground in a 

 field of grass. Farmers will, under the new order of things, indeed, 

 require not less, but, quite the reverse, more manual labour than 

 has hitherto been employed. For the urgent need of " product ion, 

 which is now generally recognised and felt, is sure to oompel our 

 farmers, notwithstanding the growing cost of labour, 1<> proceed 

 from the "lazy farming" hitherto practised— such as, of OOUTSe, 

 our moist climate, propitious to the growth of grass and herbs, lias 

 favoured, and which tradition and long practice and our own 



