THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE. 4? 



been done in the same direction in France, Belgium 

 and America, 



The cause of this general downward movement is 

 self-evident. It is the desertion, the abandonment of 

 the land. Each crop requiring human labour has had its 

 area reduced ; and one-third of the agricultural labourers 

 have been sent away since 1861 to reinforce the ranks 

 of the unemployed in the cities,* so that far from being 

 over-populated, the fields of Britain are starved of 

 human labour as James Caird used to say. The British 

 nation does not work on her soil ; she is prevented from 

 doing so ; and the would-be economists complain that 

 the soil will not nourish its inhabitants! 



I once took a knapsack and went on foot out of 

 London, through Sussex. I had read Leonce de La- 

 vergne's work and expected to find a soil busily culti- 

 vated ; but neither round London nor still less farther 

 south did I see men in the fields. In the Weald I could 

 walk for twenty miles without crossing anything but 

 heath or woodlands, rented as pheasant-shooting grounds 

 to " London gentlemen," as the labourers said. " Un- 

 grateful soil " was my first thought ; but then I would 

 occasionally come to a farm at the crossing of two roads 

 and see the same soil bearing a rich crop ; and my next 

 thought was tel seigneur, telle terre, as the French 

 peasants say. Later on I saw the rich fields of the 

 midland counties ; but even there I was struck by not 

 perceiving the same busy human labour which I was 

 accustomed to admire on the Belgian and French fields. 

 But I ceased to wonder when I learnt that only 

 1,383,000 men and women in England and Wales work 

 in the fields, while more than 16,000,000 belong to the 

 " professional, domestic, indefinite, and unproductive 

 class/' as these pitiless statisticians say. One million 



* Agricultural labourers in England and Wales : 2,100,000 in 1861 

 1,383,000 in 1884; 1,311,720 in 1891. 



