432 LAND REFORM 



most calculated to encourage young persons to leave the soft 

 (see Chapter VI). 



These figures supply food for reflection for all those who 

 are interested in rural life. In marked contrast with this 

 expenditure is the small sum of ;^i 36,000 granted for the 

 promotion of agriculture. I have referred (Chapter VI) to 

 the large grants made for that purpose by almost every other 

 Government in Europe. If we take America we find that 

 the appropriations for the Department of Agriculture of the 

 United States for the year 1904 were (including the expenses 

 of the weather bureau) no less than 5,428,160 dollars, or much 

 above one million sterling. This is in addition to the sums 

 voted for the support of agriculture by the Legislatures of the 

 different States of America. Further than this, Congress has 

 authorized an expenditure of ;^300,ooo for a new building 

 at Washington for the Department of Agriculture. This 

 building, the plans of which are approved, is to stand in forty 

 acres of ground, to be most complete for experimental and 

 administrative purposes, and is " designed to combine dignity 

 with beauty and utility." The Annual Report of the Depart- 

 ment of Agriculture justifies this great expenditure in terms 

 that might be useful to bring to the notice of the British 

 public, to whom, mainly, the arguments in this book are 

 addressed. 



Under the heading " Agriculture as a Source of National 

 Wealth " the Report states : " Favoured with continued 

 prosperity in 1904, the farming element of the people had 

 laid broader, deeper, and more substantial the foundation of 

 a magnificent agriculture. . . . Thus it has happened the 

 farms of the nation have been that sustaining power upon 

 which a basic dependence must be placed in all stresses by a 

 people endeavouring to maintain economic self-sufficiency. 

 . . . An occupation that has produced such an unthinkable 

 value as one aggregating 5000 million dollars (about 1000 

 millions sterling) within a year may be better measured by 

 some comparisons. All of the gold mines of the entire 

 world have not produced, since Columbus discovered 

 America, a greater wealth of gold than the farmers of this 

 country have produced in wealth in two years ; this year's 



