294 LAND REFORM 



the yeoman farmer — receiving a bounty and no longer 

 subject to having rent raised — could afford to pay them. 



If this were done, even on the small scale named, it 

 would mean that (reckoning the families) at least 

 25,000 persons would be restored to the land. The 

 yield from the acreage named — at 30 bushels an acre 

 — would be 6,000,000 bushels. So that this small 

 area, only the size of that which went out of wheat 

 cultivation in a single season, would produce wheat 

 enough to supply bread to 1,000,000 of our people for 

 a whole year. 



It mi^ht be interestina to extend these calculations. 

 Roughly estimated, our total supply of wheat (includ- 

 ing flour expressed as wheat) from all sources for the 

 calendar year 1903 was as follows : — 



Quarters. 



Home production . . . 7,000,000 



Foreign imports . . . 20,000,000 



Imports from India and the Colonies 7,000,000 



Total . . 34,000,000^ 



To produce this total and enable us, so far as bread 

 is concerned, to become a self-feeding nation, would 



extra men for every 200 acres. Of course, the presumption is that the 

 land would be tilled, not in the labour-starved manner in which so much 

 of it is now, but in a thoroughly good manner, as undoubtedly would be 

 the case by a farmer who ov^ned the land. 



^ These estimates are based on figures given in " Statistical Abstracts " 

 of the United Kingdom ; " Agricultural Returns," Board of Agriculture ; 

 "The Journal of the Board of Agriculture"; "The Corn Trade Year 

 Book," Bromhall ; Vinton's " Agricultural Almanac." The returns some- 

 what vary on account of the difference between those given for the cereal 

 year (August to August) and those given for the calendar year. The 

 changes in the sources of supply of agricultural produce generally, and 

 qualifications of the estimates of the home supply of wheat, are fully dealt 

 with in an admirable report by Major Craigie : "Report on Agricultural 

 Returns, 1903," Board of Agriculture. Tlie same subjects are discussed 

 in "The Journal of the Board of Agriculture," December, 1904. 



