PART II. 

 TO ECONOMISE CONSUMPTION 



CHAPTER VI. 

 COWS AND MEN 



A MAN of towns, a way from the soil since childhood, 

 in a pursuit as far from farming as it could be, I 

 became also a farmer, against my will and solely 

 for the sake of others, with a passion for country 

 life as the sole sustaining motive, a keen sense of 

 my ignorance as the last ground for success, and 

 no interest in farm animals that had any relation 

 to their profit. That was fourteen years ago. 



I had, however, been occupied with the study 

 of economic tendency, and I thought I could see 

 that, in the course of things as they worked, 

 civilisation in general must some day confront a 

 food problem, to the advantage of the farmer and 

 at the expense of everybody else. During several 

 generations the urban growth throughout the 

 world had been increasingly large out of propor- 

 tion to the agrarian economy in productive power, 

 multiplying so many more appetites than hands 

 to feed them, not to mention the increasing 

 proportion of non-productive people who always 

 arise, to consume the more, in an advanced state 

 of industrial development. I could hear grave 



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