Land Problems and National Welfare 



his own best advantage as well as to that of the 

 land and the country at large. Recognising 

 that no country can flourish long if its agricul- 

 ture is in a bad condition, every continental 

 country has created a system of education 

 beneficial to agriculture, which is available 

 for the sons of all tillers of the soil ; and this 

 system of education has done more than any- 

 thing else to check the disastrous flow of 

 population from the rural districts to the towns. 

 Education was the basis of all agricultural 

 reform ; it was followed up by the creation of a 

 complete scheme of co-operation, which natur- 

 ally carried with it improved conditions of 

 marketing, and by a carefully developed system 

 of cheap transport. 



But it is unnecessary to go into further details; 

 the development on the continent is now fairly 

 familiar to all interested in land, and I have 

 drawn attention to it here only to lay stress 

 upon the contrast between the two ways of 

 meeting the new world competition : the one 

 — an unwise reduction of expenditure below the 

 minimum required to keep land in good con- 

 dition ; the other — sound and economic increase 

 of expenditure on land to make it yield more 

 food for the nation and a larger margin of profit 

 for the cultivator. 



As education is the basis of all reform, the 

 first step that should be taken in England is to 



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