3o8 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



the sale of a pig — thanks in great part to compulsory- 

 registration of title. And the folk settling are of more 

 modest pretensions, perhaps, to begin with, than our own 

 people. However, if our settlers' demands may be a little 

 superior, so are our means of meeting them. " Is not 

 wealthy England," so President Metz asked me, full of 

 astonishment at our inaction, at our last interview, in 1911, 

 " in a position to find the necessary funds for such an 

 undertaking, which repays its cost over and over again in 

 benefit to the country ? " 



Supposing that we seriously desire to retain Labour for 

 our Agriculture, or rather call it back to what it ought 

 never to have been permitted to leave, we shall have sooner 

 or later to decide upon something of the same kind. We 

 shall have to throw into the scale something that will 

 make a labourer's life worth living. That will be worth 

 more to the Nation than putting a tax upon the consumer 

 of corn. At present we have nothing in the country to pit 

 against the attraction, on the one hand, of town life with 

 its better paid employment, on the other, of the Colonies. 

 We shall accordingly have to create something. The very 

 number of men and women emigrating to the Colonies, 

 rather than go on living that drudging, dreary, weary, 

 hopeless life at home, shows that it is not country life or 

 agricultural occupation that our country folk object to. 

 The burden of agricultural occupation might indeed be 

 lightened, if we were to go farther in our application of 

 mechanical force and follow the German example in employ- 

 ing more electric power to move our machinery, down to 

 the smallest implements, the corn-crusher, the chaff-cutter 

 and the liquid-manure pump, and to light our barns and 

 stables. That has produced a most striking change in 

 the attitude of German peasantry looking for agricultural 

 service and labour. The work formerly dreaded and 

 shunned, as being too fatiguing and troublesome, has lost 

 its terrors since there is the electric power to lighten the 

 burden. And our facilities for instituting such power are 

 greater than those which Germany possesses. We have 

 the power fairly everyAvhere within our reach ready for 



