82 POSSIBLE DEVELOPMENTS 



can be put in any district are only learnt by experience. 

 Many of the advantages also are indirect ; the land 

 won is sheer gain to the cultivated area, no previously 

 existing labour is displaced, and the increased popula- 

 tion provided for, as well as the absolute addition to the 

 production of food, enhance the wealth of the nation 

 both by the commercial exchanges promoted and the 

 new contribution of rates and taxes. 



5. Subsidiary Agricultural Industries 



One of the evils from the social point of view that has 

 overtaken the country-side during the last sixty years 

 has been the gradual decay of the minor industries 

 depending upon agriculture. The corn mills and the 

 tanneries have largely been concentrated in the ports 

 and the towns ; the wheelwrights and the harness- 

 makers have become more shopkeepers than manufac- 

 turers ; the farriers often buy their shoes ready made ; 

 the country towns and villages have lost their old 

 craftsmen. To some extent the process is inevitable, 

 and has been due to the normal centralization of in- 

 dustries and the comparative efficiency of large busi- 

 nesses as compared with small. There are, however, 

 sundry definitely agricultural industries which can most 

 properly be conducted in close proximity to the land 

 from which the raw material is derived, but which have 

 suffered from the neglect and lack of enterprise that 

 have overtaken all matters agricultural during the last 

 half century. One example is the manufacture of beet 

 sugar. It has been fully demonstrated that sugar beet 

 of quality equal to the best continental produce can be 

 grown in England, and that the beet sugar crop would 

 find a place profitable to the farmer in the systems of 



