6 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



food without the withdrawal of labour from more profitable 

 industries." Average yields are low — considerably lower 

 than those of Belgium, Denmark, and Germany. The very 

 same acreage might very well produce twice or three times 

 the present quantity, very likely more. Cultivation is 

 backward. There is much land out of heart. And wide 

 stretches which ought to bear corn for food are left for 

 the most part under unprofitable pasture — 3,700,000 acres 

 having been added to the extent of grassland, in sheer penny 

 wisdom, to keep down the labour bill, within the past forty 

 years. The picture is one to shame our agriculturists of 

 the present day, whatever section of their own particular 

 calling they may belong to, whether landlords or farmers. 

 They hold the valuable national possession of our cultiv- 

 able land in keeping — unquestionably, as we now discern — 

 though up to now we would not realise it— as something 

 of " a trust," on behalf of the Nation. The war has taught 

 us that it is a trust. And how have they administered it ? 

 Previously the burden of every pronouncement on land 

 and agriculture was " property, property, property." So 

 the planters of the Southern States had argued when they 

 were reproached for illtreating their negro slaves, whom 

 they regarded as simply " property." Our landlords made 

 the same mistake with regard to their land. A time has 

 come when that contention will no longer pass. Every- 

 thing else has been placed at our disposal without limit 

 or measure. We can multiply manufactured goods and money 

 value at pleasure. Our land alone is narrowly restricted, 

 and the limit obviously imposes a duty, which the clamours 

 and complaints of the poorer classes, threatened with 

 famine, or something very closely approaching to it, has 

 at length during the war made us to realise. The 

 Nation's land is not " property " in the sense of money or 

 chattels. 



Our discovery of our backwardness, or retrogression, 

 has been made much more striking than it otherwise would 

 have been by the foil of German achievements, in juxta- 

 position to which it is placed and which is glaringly set 

 off by it, possibly beyond its actual desert, While we 



