There is no Bad Land 



37 



could cut them all away together early, the natives 

 must go wholly under in a second growth ; but 

 any man that has ever attempted to cut heather 

 with a scythe would rather have any other job, 

 I was delighted to find the scythe running through 

 the stuff readily, the potash and phosphates 

 having already set in a deadly dry rot in the stems 

 of the heather. Having carted off the " hay " I 

 gave the land a good dressing of farmyard dung, 

 and in autumn I had the finest pasture that I 

 knew within fifty miles, though I had expected 

 nothing of value before next year. 



Next year, without farther manuring, I mowed 

 two great crops. With a machine and two horses 

 on " the bog," I was personally cutting the second 

 crop one fine day, when who should come down 

 from a motor car into the field but Sir Horace 

 Plunkett, Lord Shaftesbury and Sir Henry 

 Doran ? They agreed that it was " the best crop, 

 first or second, they had seen that day," and they 

 had travelled far. What shall we say of an agricul- 

 tural community kept drilled to discredit a 

 demonstration like this, and to persecute a man 

 who has given so much of his life to establish the 

 economic practicability of it for their benefit ? 

 There is an end now of the discredit and the 

 persecution, but only because both are successfully 

 defeated and defied. These people do not desire 

 the productiveness of the land. They only desire 

 the land, on terms to accommodate their organised 

 incapacity at the expense of the landowner and 

 the taxpayer. They never had any personal 



