136 THE MURDER OF AGRICULTURE 



These facts are so startling, so full of import to us as a 

 people, so pregnant with significance, that it is a marvel 

 anyone should find it necessary to refer to them: a 

 marvel that we, a practical, level-headed nation, as we 

 really are at bottom, should not have become fami- 

 liar with them years ago and taken those steps which 

 were necessary to put right that which was wrong. A 

 writer here and there, or a platform orator now and 

 again has taken the trouble to point out how and where 

 we were going wrong, and a few listened and were con- 

 vinced; but as a nation our attention has been drawn 

 away from this question of supreme importance by the 

 meretriciousness of party politics, and vital national 

 interests have been sacrificed to the hollow verbosity of 

 Parliamentary wranglers. 



The time has come to assert ourselves as a sensible 

 hard-working people, who, knowing that in our magnifi- 

 cent soil and temperate climate we possess all the 

 potentialities to agricultural success, are determined to 

 convert that potential energy into an actual living power. 

 Monstrous We know that in our total area of land and water of 

 Anomaly 77 58^^000 acres, there are upwards of 63,500,000 of 

 land, most of which is eminently suitable for agricul- 

 ture. Among this enormous acreage we know that we 

 possess vast areas of the very finest corn-producing land 

 to be found in the world, and — alas, that it should be so — 

 we also know that most of this splendid land, this poten- 

 tial source of national wealth and collective prosperity, 

 is shamefully wasted in growing green crops for sheep 

 feeds and grass for sheep pasturage. It is a monstrous 

 anomaly, yet nevertheless true, that in 1906, while we 



