74 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



it is profitableness that the Nation certainly looks for. 

 The fault really lies with such landlords occupying a posi- 

 tion for which they do not possess the necessary capital, 

 such as tillage undoubtedly in the present day requires. 

 That being so, they ought in justice to the Nation, which 

 has a right to ask that it should be fed by the land, to get 

 out of their possessions, or else to reduce them so as to 

 make them proportionate to their capital. Land in England 

 is not a ranch. You can scarcely in fairness make the 

 consumer answerable for the landlord engaging in a land- 

 lord's business with insufficient capital. 



" Landlords," so writes Mr. Prothero, " have no money to 

 make the necessary changes. To say this, however, is 

 only to say that the modern system of farming has broken 

 down in one of its most essential features." 



The condition of our Agriculture, portrayed as it has 

 been by master pens, some of whose writings have been 

 here quoted, make it quite clear where really the shoe 

 pinches. One point which people writing about a paying 

 price for wheat appear to be constantly losing out of sight 

 is this, that the more intensive the farming, the larger 

 accordingly the number of bushels reaped to the acre, the 

 smaller is the cost of every bushel, the wider the margin 

 of profit. An industrial factory turns out more cheaply 

 than a single worker, because it turns out much more to 

 the same implement and the same horse power. The ton 

 of coal stands us in more at the rate of 248 tons turned out 

 by one man, as compared with 472 tons turned out by one 

 man in Canada, 542 in Australia, and 600 in the United 

 States. So do our shoes stand the shoe manufacturers 

 in more, whose men turn out, with 172 horse power, 171 

 per man, to 516, which a man turns out in the United 

 States with 486 horse power. It is the same in farming. 

 It is intensiveness which makes things cheap. The " law 

 of diminishing returns " as distinguishing Agriculture from 

 Industry, has been pushed too far. That on well tilled, 

 long cultivated soil, as at Rothamsted, there is a limit 

 to remunerative manuring is perfectly true. However, 

 the bulk of our cultivated land does not stand in the same 



