CHAPTER VIII 

 POSSIBILITIES OF THE FUTURE 



THERE can be nothing more unsafe than to forecast what is to 

 happen in the future either to the industry which feeds us, or 

 to the agricultural community the class to which we look for 

 an infusion of healthier blood into that section of the population 

 which has been enervated by the smoke and excitement of large 

 manufacturing towns. Innumerable articles in periodicals and 

 daily newspapers have brought forward every conceivable 

 reason why this country, taught by the experience of the last 

 four years, should maintain a prosperous agriculture in the 

 future, so that the home production of food may be sufficient 

 to protect us against the terrible risk of national hunger which 

 we ran during the war. Judging only by the good intentions, 

 the logic, and the earnestness of the great majority of writers 

 who lay down sound principles of agricultural policy, one 

 would have no doubts as to future prosperity. But, alas, one 

 has to remember that political exigencies have in the past 

 played a prominent part in the direction of public opinion on 

 questions of production; that politicians, while paying lip- 

 service to the principle that food-production is "England's 

 greatest industry," have in practice always supported urban, 

 at the expense of rural enterprise ; that the votes of the towns- 

 man must always be more numerous, and therefore more 

 powerful, than those of the countryman. While we may thank 

 God that the heroic efforts of our wonderful seamen have 

 prevented us from receiving in its full bitterness a lesson that 

 would have made us demand fair play for agriculture,we should 

 recognize that if the policy of the past 50 years is to be re- 

 sumed after the war, the efforts of agricultural reformers are 

 useless. Most of the farms where, before the war, intensive 

 production was profitable are not in need of searching reform ; 

 there are now, and are always likely to be, some men good 

 enough to carry on wherever circumstances allow of high 



