Education 



should serve some apprenticeship to the trades 

 mentioned; he should spend three or four years 

 with the various agricultural businesses, not 

 working for a salary, but paying a premium and 

 learning all he can. It would be expensive, but 

 profitable. He would be sure of his practical 

 farming; he takes that in with his earliest breath, 

 and is almost a complete farmer before he leaves 

 the cradle. Let him then have a decent training. 

 But the successful farmer may urge that he is 

 satisfied; that his profits are comfortable, and 

 why should he be bothered with training his 

 sons when the good old ways are enough for him ? 



There are several reasons. 



The increasing cheapness of sea freight and 

 improved systems of cold storage will continue 

 to tell against him. The threatened Channel 

 tunnel would cost British agriculturists a thou- 

 sand times more than it cost its builders, for 

 France would become an acute competitor to our 

 market gardeners, potato growers, raisers of fruit, 

 flowers, and all those perishable goods at present 

 handicapped by sea passage, and there are other 

 dangers. We must not depend on present 

 prosperity. 



Let the successful farmer read Rider Haggard's 

 Rural Denmark or Seebohm Rowntree's work on 

 Belgium, and hide his head. Better educated than 



127 



