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can take its proper place amongst national industries. That position 

 can never be attained until farming can be said to be taking a much 

 fuller advantage of scientific knowledge, both as applied to technical 

 processes, and to management, so as to produce more nearly the 

 maximum of food for the nation and also to offer a better life to the 

 worker. At the present time neither of these conditions is satisfied. 

 We find that over far too large a proportion of the country the general 

 standard of farm management is below that of the best farms, with 

 the inevitable result that only a low standard of production is achieved 

 and the condition of life of those concerned is correspondingly low. 

 In this way the industry shows itself unattractive alike to the capitalist 

 and to the worker to a degree which distinguishes it from all other 

 industries. 



It seems necessary, therefore, to examine the organisation of the 

 farming industry to see in what respects it differs from that of other 

 productive enterprises, and to what extent benefit might result from 

 a reorganisation of the methods of agricultural production. We find 

 that English farming is in the hands of a large number of small 

 capitalists ; some styles of management, such as fruit farming, call 

 for a larger investment of money than others, such as sheep farming ; 

 but no man can embark on any kind of farm management in this 

 country without capital, so that the industry is closed to the man who 

 has nothing but his brains to invest. These small capitalists are men 

 equipped for the most part with a high degree of technical knowledge 

 in certain directions ; they understand the handling of the soil, and 

 know when it is in a proper state for cultural operations, and when 

 these should not be attempted ; they also possess that wonderful 

 ' eye for stock ' which enables them to appreciate differences 

 imperceptible to any but those who have spent their early days on 

 the land. But in other directions no less important to the full develop- 

 ment of farming the farmer's knowledge is often much less complete. 

 His training in the commercial side of his business is usually very 

 inadequate ; his knowledge of accounts is often so slight that he cannot 

 prepare a statement of his financial position upon which his bankers 

 could act in making him advances of capital, nor can he produce a 

 profit and loss account upon which the Inland Revenue authorities 

 can assess him to income-tax, while the fact that scientific book-keeping 

 affords the only reliable means by which to control and develop an 

 enterprise has never been realised by him at all. 



Again, he is quite unfamiliar with the discoveries of modern agri- 

 cultural science ; the action of manures, the relative values of feeding- 

 stuffs, the physiology of plant and animal life, the nature and control 

 of animal and plant diseases, all these things, important though they 

 be, are quite outside the equipment of the average farmer. Moreover 

 the prevailing system of weights and measures, and that of market 

 customs, operate against the producer and too much in favour of the 

 distributor. A bushel of wheat may be anything from 60 Ib. to 72 Ib. ; 

 beef and mutton are sold by the head instead of by weight, which 



