WORKING CREDIT FOR FARMERS. 219 



bent upon, there must be more working capital at the 

 disposal of the agriculturist — whether his holding be large 

 or small. 



The fact was already plainly recognised, by the Royal 

 Commission of 1894, at any rate at the close of its inquiry, 

 which took place at a period when this peculiar aspect of 

 the agricultural question irresistibly forced itself upon the 

 attention of inquirers. For in 1894 the prolonged depression, 

 which is said to have cost British landlords and tenants 

 between them more then £800,000,000 (making, it is true, no 

 allowance for earlier appreciations) , still weighed heavily upon 

 the calling, although at that time drawing to its close. Of 

 such approaching change, however, at the time no one could 

 be sure. The depression had upset all older notions respect- 

 ing the alternation of seasons and the quantity of working 

 capital necessary for carrying on farming successfully. 

 Nobody yet dreamt of the lesson which under Mr. Middle- 

 ton's competent guidance German Agriculture, with its 

 high-pressure working, was destined to teach us. But we 

 knew that under the effect of a succession of bad harvests, 

 coupled with low prices for leading cereals, many farmers 

 had been ruined, and that the old allowance of £10 an acre 

 — in many cases only a counsel of perfection — which would 

 stand one bad harvest, could not be made to weather two 

 or more. 



Accordingly the Report of the Commission called pointed 

 attention to the desirableness of providing for a better 

 equipment of farmers with funds. And newspapers, echoing 

 that demand, evidently without much familiarity with 

 the matter, more solito called upon the Government to step 

 in and provide what was wanted out of its assumedly 

 inexhaustible store without overmuch regard for certainty 

 of recovery. The Government was to make inquiry as 

 to which farmers could turn credit to good account and on 

 the strength of that to let them have whatever might be 

 considered necessary. 



To one cause of prevailing insufficiency of farmers' 

 working capital some writers deserving a hearing had 

 already called attention It was decades before that the 



