8o THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



author of the saying, it has become a current observation 

 among us that German Agriculture has risen to its present 

 height " within the past forty years." Well, those " forty 

 years " are the very same period in which our Agriculture 

 has gone down to the point over which Sir Rider Haggard 

 has shed tears and which the Milner Committee has found 

 to be discreditable — the same period in which we have had 

 3,700,000 acres of our whilom 5,400,000 acres of tilled land 

 laid down, in a sort of composition with bankruptcy, to 

 very much less profitable grass ; in which our landlords and 

 tenants have lost enormous sums of money and heart ; 

 and in which Labour has been forced off the land, by dis- 

 tress, by the hundred thousand. Germany has had her 

 bad times during those forty years just as well as we. It 

 was during those " forty years " that Baden and the 

 adjoining countries had those " ten years of distress," 

 one bad harvest following upon another, which made the 

 Badenese Minister of Agriculture of the time, Dr. Buchen- 

 berger, own to me (in 1889) that he was puzzled to explain 

 how the small farmers — all small and nearly all of them 

 owners — had been able to hold on. But the bad period 

 did not appear to affect them. North Germany as well 

 has had its bad seasons. The year 1893 was to all Germany 

 a season of severe trial, owing to the long-continued drought, 

 which drove German farmers wellnigh to despair. It was 

 then that the remarkable resources of Organisation so 

 brilliantly disclosed themselves and Co-operation brought 

 such almost marvellous relief. There have been other 

 untoward seasons. Nevertheless, in spite of it all, Mr. 

 Middleton's " Memorandum " shows that Germany has 

 marched on, going from strength to strength, till it has 

 come, agriculturally, to beat us. 



And Germany is not the only country which has prospered 

 in this way. The advance made in the Netherlands and in 

 Belgium is enormous. Denmark has gone prodigiously 

 ahead. Italy has done the same. Spain has begun its 

 own upbuilding of Agriculture. In the Scandinavian 

 kingdoms progress has been very marked. Russia, like- 

 wise, has benefited by the change — even before the late 



