THE WANT OF CAPITAL 401 



community, more willing to acquiesce in the loss of control over local 

 affairs. If this is true, and if only a decreasing minority are still 

 prepared to sacrifice their leisure and amusements to the discharge 

 of public duties, it is an unhealthy, if not a dangerous, symptom. 

 Something of the same apathy is certainly visible in the management 

 of many estates. Much ought to be done, which is left undone, 

 to put land to its most profitable use and to adapt its equipment to 

 the requirements of diversified farming. The impoverishment of 

 landowners by the new burden of taxation, which not only cripples 

 their incomes but cuts into their capital, is undoubtedly the main 

 cause of the neglect. They have not the money with which to make 

 the necessary changes. To say this, however, is only to say that 

 the modern system of farmmg has broken down in one of its most 

 essential features. 



Intensive cultivation means the expenditure on the land either 

 of more money or of more labour. The hberal appHcation of capital 

 to land by both owner and occupier was one of the ideals at which 

 high farming aimed from the close of the eighteenth century onwards. 

 Landlords spent their money hberally on the up-to-date equipment 

 of their land with houses, farm-buildings, cottages, drainage, 

 fences, roads ; mainly by their expenditure, directly or indirectly, 

 prairie land has been converted into agricultural land. Tenants 

 hired the use of all this capital at the moderate rate of interest which 

 is represented by the rent, and spent their own money generously 

 in working their farms so as to obtain the largest possible return. 

 So long as both parties were able to do their part, and so long as 

 prices were remunerative, the system profited both. The nation 

 also benefited by the increased amount and lessened cost of pro- 

 duction. But during the last half of the reign of Queen Victoria, 

 the rapid decline in the value of agricultural produce caused the 

 collapse of the system. Both partners lost a large part of their 

 capital. Prolonged depression compelled landlords to practise 

 economies themselves and to acquiesce in the economies of their 

 tenants. The land has suffered and is still suffering. Thousands of 

 acres of tillage and grass-land are comparatively wasted, under- 

 farmed, and undermanned. Countries, whose climate is severer 

 than our own, and in which poorer soils are cultivated, produce far 

 more from the land than ourselves. The gross receipts per cultivated 

 acre in Great Britain have been calculated at only one-fifth of those 

 of Belgium, and two-thirds of those of Denmark. 



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