220 THE FUTURE OF , OUR AGRICULTURE. 



Farmer's Magazine related that possibly hypothetical tale of 

 the farmer who had three daughters and i,ooo acres of land 

 and who, for want of cash, handed over successively to each 

 of his daughters, on her marriage, 250 acres as a marriage 

 portion, and who, to his surprise, found after parting with 

 each lot that, instead of having to pinch, as he had anti- 

 cipated, he did better — and best of all on the 250 acres 

 ultimately left. In his " Pilgrimage " Mr. A. D. Hall 

 rightly lays some stress upon the mistaken policy of some 

 farmers who hold land in excess of what their working capital 

 will adequately finance, and upon the indifferent farming 

 resulting from such practice. For to-day it is money — to 

 be coupled, of course, with brains — which determines 

 success in farming. It is money which " fetches " the 

 maximum production, as well as the maximum profit, out 

 of the soil. 



As a case in point I should like to quote that of our great 

 Co-operative Societies going into farming. A question has 

 recently been raised, more specifically in Ireland, as to the 

 propriety of their occupying land — which Nature appears 

 to have intended rather for the local farmer — for the benefit 

 of their distant consumers. Whatever be the objections, 

 from a farmer's point of view, those well-endowed societies, 

 bent upon business, have certainly shown us how greatly 

 production may be intensified and rendered remunerative 

 by farming with a full pocket, which need not stick at 

 expense. That in itself shows how much beyond its proper 

 limit the theory of " diminishing returns " has of late 

 been pushed among our writers. No doubt there is a point 

 at which fertilisers cease to yield a proportionate return — 

 even if well chosen. And in Woburn and Rothamsted — 

 the places quoted to press the principle — that point is not 

 likely to be very far off. However, on the bulk of our land 

 there is a good distance still which separates us from that 

 critical limit. And there, the more heavily you manure, 

 the more profit you are likely to secure. When I took the 

 agricultural delegates from various European countries 

 attending our first International Co-operative Congress, 

 in 1895, over the Borstal Farm in Woolwich, belonging to 



