288 LAND REFORM 



cultivation of our fields to be abandoned, the foreign 

 fiscal policy will have a like disastrous effect on our 

 workshops and factories. 



It is difficult to ascertain, exactly, the amount of loss 

 which traders and manufacturers have sustained by 

 the decline of agriculture, and the extent to which 

 they are still dependent for prosperity on that half- 

 ruined industry. Several practical men have given 

 much time and attention to these two points, and the 

 results of their calculations are such as should arrest 

 the attention of every commercial man in the kingdom. 

 Perhaps the most elaborate and complete of these 

 calculations are those made by Mr. R. E. Turnbull.^ 



The lines on which they are made, Mr. Turnbull 

 claims, are such as to make it impossible for a practical 

 man to make a mistake of any great importance. 

 Passing over the details of this exhaustive paper, a 

 few of the conclusions arrived at cannot fail to be 

 interesting to the general public. 



Mr. Turnbull takes all the land in the United 

 Kingdom occupied for agricultural purposes, and treats 

 it as one large farm. His calculations cover a period 

 of twenty-five years, that is, from June, 1872, to June, 

 1897 He estimates the average gross annual revenue 

 from this large farm during each of the five years 

 between these dates. The figures as regards revenue 

 refer solely to the value of the produce sold by farmers 

 to persons who do not occupy land, and to the value of 

 produce consumed in the houses of the farmers. Sales 



^ This valuable and carefully prepared contribution to the subject 

 is contained in a paper (73 pages) entitled, " Farm Capital and Revenue," 

 by R. E. Turnbull, Claremont, Shrewsbury. It is published in the 

 Transactions (Vol. X, 1898) of the Highland and Agricultural Society of 

 Scotland. (Blackwood, Edinburgh.) 



