470 A FARMER'S YEAR 



II 



NOTE 



As an almost perfect illustration of the effect of unfettered foreign competition 

 upon the prospects of the British Producer, I reprint here a very striking letter, 

 written by Mr. Frederick Marryat, an Argentine farmer, which appeared in the 

 Morning Post of June 17, 1899. I wish to call attention particularly to Mr. 

 Marryat's statements as to the British butcher and ' home-grown ' meat, and 

 to his debonnaire summing up of the situation in the last sentence of his letter. 

 Little wonder that he kind and altruistic competitor puts up the pious 

 prayer that free trade may long continue, in view of his own conclusion that in 

 face of it ' the revival of English agriculture is an utter impossibility, ' 



To the Editor of the ' Morning Post ' 



SIR, I have read with much interest the various theories pro- 

 pounded both for and against the revival of English agriculture 

 wondering much at the hopefulness of some contributors, and at the 

 'baseless fabric of a dream' on which they rely. I have been for 

 nearly twenty years a breeder of cattle, sheep, and horses, a fattener 

 of stock, and a grower of wheat, maize, hay and barley, in the Argentine 

 Republic, and I can say with confidence that as long as Free Trade 

 exists and long may it do so the revival of English agriculture is 

 an utter impossibility. England cannot compete with new countries 

 in producing any of the things enumerated above, and time will only 

 add new obstacles. We have everything in our favour. Millions of 

 acres of virgin soil from one to four feet deep to be rented or bought 

 at a nominal valuation ; a climate where stock of all kinds can remain 

 in the open paddocks all the year round with no artificial fattening 

 food except, perhaps, a little hay in exceptional droughts ; labour of 

 ploughing, &c., far below European wages, the cost of harrowing, 

 ploughing and sowing by contract, coming out at about I s. 6d. an acre, 

 the owner supplying horses and implements ; one man, with a double 

 furrow plough and four horses, doing about four acres of ploughing per 

 day, and the cost of transport so low that freights from Buenos Ayres 

 or Rosario to Liverpool are but little more than those from Liverpool 



