PEASANT PROPRIETARY 15 



paragus — a plant indigenous to England — for which 

 there is an enormous demand, and the successful cul- 

 tivation of which, in a form to meet the requirements 

 of the market, requires that minute attention which 

 a small owner alone can o^ive. Besides the articles 

 named there are vast quantities of dried and preserved 

 fruits and vegetables and of fruit jellies of various 

 kinds imported every year — mainly from Holland, 

 Belgium, France, and Germany — which, with a revival 

 of rural prosperity, would in all probability, at least to 

 a large extent, be produced at home. Flowers and 

 honey may be termed specialities of the peasant pro- 

 prietor. Of the former we imported in 1904 to the 

 value of nearly a quarter of a million sterling, and of 

 the latter about ^30,000.^ 



Here at our very doors we have a vast and ever- 

 increasing market for articles of food which this 

 country is by nature fitted to produce, and with regard 

 to some of them more fitted than any other country. 

 But it is a market we cannot supply under our present 

 system, and so the door is closed to sound and profit- 

 able employment for an enormous number of our 

 people. At the same time millions of acres of land 

 have gone out of cultivation, and the process is steadily 

 continuing, while the rural population are migrating to 

 already overcrowded centres of industry, in the hope 

 of bettering their condition. 



It is as if a manufacturer with the offer of abundance 

 of orders, with materials lying on the ground, and 

 workmen standing idle, were, through defects in his 



^ A year or two ago there was a growing trade in the export of 

 Enghsh grapes to France, but recently the French Government put a 

 prohibitive duty on that article which straightway put an end to the 

 trade. 



