WHAT MIGHT BE AND WHAT IS 255 



other parts of the country. It ought to pay, but the tax 

 and rate collectors, the tithe-owner, and the middlemen 

 get the most of whatever increment is earned. The 

 land is staggering beneath the cost of its upkeep and 

 the burdens that accumulate on it year by year. It 

 can scarcely support the owner, the tenant, and the 

 labourer in the face of foreign competition and at 

 the present prices of produce. If one of these three 

 classes were eliminated ; if the burdens were lessened; 

 above all, if co-operation were universal, there would 

 be a different tale to tell in England. 



Some may think this a pessimistic saying. They 

 may point to recent paragraphs which they have read 

 in newspapers about the demand for farms and the 

 money that farmers are supposed to be making. 

 Where are they, these money-making agriculturists ? 

 Why, when they come to die, do their wills so care- 

 fully conceal their gathered wealth ? Of late years, it 

 is true, there have been signs of hope. Rents in certain 

 districts have gone up a little, which suggests that in 

 those districts more people (some of them townsfolk as 

 I am told) want to hire land ; corn has commanded a 

 better price; a few tenants, too, have purchased their 

 holdings. But in this sorry season of 19 10 corn has 

 fallen again like the rain and so have sheep. 



For the rest, is it not partly to be accounted for 

 by the movement that is known as Tariff Reform ? 

 My conviction is that a great many farmers, good, 

 easy men, believe or believed that whatever states- 

 men might say or leave unsaid, Tariff Reform meant 

 rich round taxes on imported corn and meat. Also 

 some of them believed that this halcyon dream would 

 be almost immediately translated into fact. 



But as Tariff Reform grows more nebulous, and 



