58 OUR ENGLISH LAND MUDDLE. 



it was the second blow, not the first, to the 

 economic position of the English landowner. 

 He had to face first the competition of the mine 

 and the factory for his labour supply, and then 

 the competition of the foreigner's products for 

 his customers. 



Yet a third blow was to be struck. Shortly 

 after the British people, alone among the peoples 

 of the world, decided that agriculture had to be 

 left to swim or sink under Free Trade conditions, 

 the great empty spaces of the New World began 

 to come under the plough. They were culti- 

 vated roughly, cheaply, and the virgin soil 

 responded at first with good crops. The result 

 was a flood of cheap agricultural products, 

 which threatened for a time the economic 

 stability of every landed industry in the Old 

 World. The wheat — to take one typical in- 

 stance — of the new lands, grown without fer- 

 tilizers, with but the lightest cultivation, on 

 lands subjected to no burdens of supporting 

 great armaments and great hordes of industrial 

 paupers — this wheat, transported across the 

 oceans by the new cheap means of communica- 

 tion which steam machinery had made possible, 



