REMEDIES SUGGESTED. 53 



Belgium, less also than in Germany, viz., 13-8 quintals per 

 hectare to the German 22. M. Albert Dulac, a farming land- 

 owner in Normandy, who has visited this country on purpose 

 to study our Agriculture, in a little book published not 

 long ago, draws an instructive comparison, very much in 

 disfavour of France, between our two countries, and dis- 

 tinctly attributes French comparative backwardness to 

 the fact that among ourselves, where there are no artificial 

 aids to wheat growing, farmers are put upon their mettle 

 and compelled to exert themselves, whereas in France the 

 protective duty leads them to depend mainly upon that, 

 and makes them pro tanto indolent. They do not put 

 their best leg forward. 



And to what extent has Italy benefited by a duty equally 

 excessive, to the serious prejudice of its half-starved labour- 

 ing population ? Its yield ranks among the lowest average 

 yields in Europe. Not long ago it was officially recorded 

 that, as in the days of Columella, it reaped only four grains 

 to one grain sown, in some cases only two. And whenever 

 hard times come it has perforce to suspend its tariff. 



How different are these results from those presented in 

 high-farming Belgium, in educationally active Denmark, 

 and in the pushing and calculating Netherlands, all of them 

 Free Trade countries, which spurn Protection ! Their 

 yields stand at the top of the list, that of Belgium, thanks 

 to an enlightened Government policy in the matter of means 

 of transport, highest ; that of Denmark, thanks to its 

 highly developed co-operative organisation — as Mr. Prothero 

 has recorded — about fifty per cent, above our own (he says 

 that our average crop equals two-thirds of the Danish). 

 And with regard to the Dutch farmer, who beats ours in 

 dairying and cheesemaking, Mr. Robertson Scott writes : 



" It would be a mistake to imagine that the natural man in 

 Queen Wilhelmina's dominions was much more eager than 

 the countryman of other nations to leave behind him the ways 

 of his fathers and exert himself to manage his holding on new 

 lines. , . . What set the farmer to use his wits and to seek and 

 value science and commercial instruction was the gracious pinch 

 of competition." 



