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cannot be regarded as tending to remove the disabilities of the agri- 

 cultural industry ; it will certainly tend to mitigate them, but to rest 

 content with efforts made along these lines is to rest content with a 

 transitional and incomplete system of organisation. The occasional 

 visits of the most skilful County Agricultural Organiser cannot supply 

 deficiencies in the farmer's scientific knowledge, nor can adventures 

 in speculative banking on the part of the State replace in a really 

 satisfactory manner the farmer's ignorance of commercial systems. 

 The provision of allotments, too, is a recognition of the inadequacy 

 of the labourer's wage ; and small holdings, though they may provide 

 a stepping-stone to higher things for a few thrifty men, will do nothing 

 to help the great mass of farm workers, who are bound to remain workers 

 for wages all their lives. Changes intended to bring about a real 

 improvement in farming must be more radical than these. 



What we have to recognise is that agriculture is still an unorganised 

 industry. It stands to-day midway between the small, self-contained 

 and self-sufficing enterprise, run in the main to grow food for the 

 occupier's household, and the industrial organisation under which the 

 workers are catering for the market and looking to a monetary return 

 to enable them to secure the necessaries of life. In an industrial 

 country the former condition is an anachronism, and what English 

 rural reformers have got to do if agriculture is ever to take its proper 

 place in our national economy is to direct all their energies towards 

 the evolution of a farming system based on large-scale production. 

 It is generally accepted that in other forms of enterprise large-scale 

 production is the only possible basis for organisation, and it is only by 

 the adoption of this standard in agriculture that this country can hope 

 to provide the maximum of food for the nation, and the greatest 

 reward for the worker. 



Let us see how this system would act as a solution of the problems 

 already enumerated. The development of the large, industrialised 

 farm would at once open agriculture as a profession to the man with 

 nothing to invest beyond his energy and his ability. For nearly a 

 generation State-aided agricultural colleges and the agricultural 

 departments of the Universities have offered opportunitfes to men to 

 equip themselves in the science and practice of farming, and numbers 

 of young men have availed themselves of them. A few of these men 

 who were able to command capital have started farming in this country, 

 and others, have found openings in the growth of a demand for specially 

 qualified men to act as lecturers, as the need for instruction in agri- 

 cultural sciences became more generally recognised. But the greater 

 number of those without capital have been compelled to emigrate, 

 either to those countries where land is to be obtained, or else to manager- 

 ships in joint-stock enterprises engaged in some form of tropical 

 agriculture tea, rubber, indigo, and so on. Thus, the new and great 

 force which should have been brought to bear on food production at 

 home has been lost to the country. The English farmer does not 

 employ managers, the scale of his operations would hardly justify this 



