SHORTCOMINGS OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



3 



On this point the inquiries which the war has prompted 

 have shown us to be miserably unprepared. Indeed, the 

 discovery is of much older date than the war and than 

 the institution of Departmental inquiries begun in 1915. 

 Really the evil has stared us in the face for many years 

 back. All the world knew that our Agriculture had long 

 passed its zenith and was struggling through trying times. 

 Ever since the close of what Mr. Prothero has styled 

 " the golden age of English Farming " the realm of Ceres 

 had been troubled. Some of us still remember the dire 

 scourge of rinderpest, carrying ruin for thousands in its 

 train. That being done with, a period of agricultural unrest 

 set in, in all grades of the calling. Tenant right claimed 

 its own. There were spirited debates between spokesmen 

 of the landlords and of the farmers, the echoes of which 

 still ring in aged ears. Landlords' supremacy was held to 

 signify tenants' wrong. There was then no compensation 

 for improvements. Game had a free run across farmers' 

 fields. The rabbit pest was rampant and accounts of its 

 depredations filled columns of our agricultural and pro- 

 vincial papers with tales of woe. Time after time were 

 legislative remedies asked for and denied, till the tenants 

 mustered in the ranks of their " Alliance " and, like the 

 French revolutionaries, " forming their battalions," ex- 

 torted redress. The result was a series of Agricultural 

 Holdings Acts (which do not even yet set all things right) 

 the first of which was that passed by Mr. Disraeh in 1875. 

 By that time labourers had likewise risen in not unprovoked 

 revolt and, once united — for too brief a time to serve their 

 own purpose — they succeeded in obtaining at any rate 

 some measure of improvement of their condition. Shortly 

 after, the first period of Agricultural Depression set in — 

 a severe visitation, only too soon to be followed by a second, 

 as ruinous. Every one who chose to open his eyes could 

 see then that British Agriculture was losing ground. Mil- 

 lions of acres passed out of arable cultivation, the national 

 wheat crop shrank ; the profits from newly laid down 

 grass did not approximately make up for the loss ; labour 

 deserted and became scarce, ^^'arning voices were heard. 



