WHAT MIGHT BE AND WHAT IS 259 



him on his feet. Sometimes, too, at the back of his 

 mind works the knowledge that after all he is but 

 a yearly tenant. But in my view the chief cause 

 is that not one British farmer in twenty owns the 

 land he tills. If he did he would look at things very 

 differently. He would know, in the modern catch- 

 word, that he must either "get on or get out," and 

 that if he got out his run-down property would fetch 

 little on sale and be almost valueless to let. So he 

 would get on, actuated thereto by the M magic of 

 ownership." 



A potent factor in a possible increase of production 

 which, if co-operation were added to it, would answer 

 most if not all of the problems of rural depression 

 in Great Britain would be the application of a more 

 intensive system of culture to the land. Thus many 

 fourth-class pastures (into which, by the way, 63,000 

 more acres have gone down in 19 10, notwithstanding 

 the proclaimed revival in agriculture) that, as the saying 

 goes, would " starve a goat," might be brought into 

 tillage and replaced by clover lays and other fodder 

 crops. As Arthur Young remarked long ago, nothing 

 is farmed worse in wide districts of England than are 

 the grass lands, which are supposed to be able to look 

 after themselves. I may add also, from personal 

 knowledge, that no circumstance in our agriculture 

 astonishes and indeed horrifies the Danish farmer 

 so much as does our huge acreage of wasteful and 

 indifferent pasture. 



Again, if the Danes owned it, much of our waste 

 land that is not cultivated at all, or only half cultivated, 

 would be brought under the plough, or if it did not 

 pay thus, would be afforested. More cows would be 

 kept, of which the surplus milk would go to butter 



