DEMONSTRATIONS BY THE STATE 51 



and might have been predicted beforehand. How often 

 has one seen men, otherwise possessed of sound com- 

 mercial instincts, put a farming business in which they 

 have invested £5,000 or so under the control of a bailiff 

 at £2 a week. Or, if a gentleman has been selected 

 for the management, his qualifications have generally 

 been negative rather than positive, an incapacity to 

 make a start in other walks of life instead of a thorough 

 apprenticeship to the knowledge and business of agri- 

 culture. It is true that managers of the right type are 

 rare here, for reasons set out above ; but some can be 

 found and others can be trained, for the material 

 exists. Farming is not a mystery open only to 

 those born within the craft ; it is just as susceptible 

 of exact knowledge and hard business treatment as any 

 other industry. If we are to believe that agriculture is 

 outside the scope of British intelligence and organiza- 

 tion, the sooner we put up the national shutters the 

 better, for that kind of mental dry rot will not be 

 confined to agriculture. Now is the time for experi- 

 ment, when the close of the war provides the oppor- 

 tunity for the regeneration of all our industries on a 

 basis of brains. 



It is not suggested that the industrialized large farm 

 outlined above can become, either by natural growth or 

 by legislative action, the normal type of British farming 

 within the near future. It does, however, so manifestly 

 represent the direction the development of the land of 

 the country should take, both in the interests of agri- 

 culture and of the nation as a whole, that the State 

 ought to institute one or two examples in order to 

 demonstrate the possibilities attached to farming 

 on this scale. If these experiments proved as 



