72 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



finding out now also about the more profitable production 

 of eggs, large quantities of which come to us, as " new 

 laid," from Italy and far Siberia. We have begun to 

 cultivate tobacco, and find that, instead of the stuff " that 

 would not even answer for fumigating plants," as one 

 high agricultural authority (the late Mr. Warren) described 

 it to me some thirty years ago, it makes a very " smoke- 

 able " as well as remunerative product. We are growing 

 sugar beet and making sugar out of it, without compunction 

 — in spite of the West Indies and Queensland, whom we 

 were erst accused by super-patriots to be robbing by using 

 beetroot sugar at all— which sugar was to be taxed up to 

 prohibition point in order to save the cane growers. We 

 know better now. And we are to have potatoes for industrial 

 purposes — the great stand-by of German Agriculture. Our 

 cultivation of fruit is making prodigious progress — and 

 is paying. There are, then, a considerable number of uses 

 that we can put land to, calculated to extract from it a 

 higher return than wheat, and in ordinary times, of even 

 greater importance, keeping the land which they occupy 

 in excellent " preparation " for wheat, when the time 

 for pushing that crop comes. When are we going to begin 

 to treat Agriculture as a " business " ? 



The true causes of the shortcomings of our Agriculture 

 evidently are to be sought in an entirely different quarter 

 from that in which we have been looking for them. Sowing 

 more land with wheat will not necessarily ensure a sufficient 

 or even corresponding addition to our national output — 

 more particularly if by means of a bounty or Protection 

 in any form a direct inducement is given to the grower to 

 grow more carelessly, since he may in this manner pocket 

 the same amount of money as before with less cash paid 

 out or labour bestowed. What tells against our Agriculture, 

 in comparison with others — as, under Mr. Middleton's 

 showing, in comparison with German — is not so much 

 deficient acreage- — though no doubt our acreage is lamentably 

 small — as deficient yield. It is not the " lOO acres " of 

 Mr. Middleton's Report, so much that we fall short in, as 

 the seventy to " seventy-five persons " nourished by their 



