The Organisation oj the Industry. 17 



illuminating as it is, it is more a series of impressionist 

 sketches than a systematic survey. There have been numer- 

 ous critics of farmers, and of our system of agriculture, 

 but the tendency has been to make sweeping generalisa- 

 tions based on contrasts with other countries, rarely with 

 sufficient allowances being made for widely different 

 conditions, or on comparisons with previous periods in 

 our own history, or from unqualified statistics of rural 

 depopulation. Thus we have had Dutch, Danish and 

 German agriculture compared with British agriculture and 

 the methods of these peoples commended to our farmers. 

 The higher production of these countries is generally 

 stressed, but it is seldom that sufficient allowance is made 

 for the widely different conditions, social, industrial, geo- 

 graphical and economic. Such comparisons help us but 

 little to estimate the possibilities of agriculture in our own 

 country, unless we have constantly in mind how difficult 

 it is in an industry such as agriculture to transplant 

 methods from one country to another. 



Perhaps the two lines of criticism which have been most 

 popular in recent years have started from a contrast 

 between the area under cereals in the 'seventies of last 

 century, and the area under the same crops in the first 

 decade of this century, and the decrease in the number of 

 workers employed in agriculture over the same period. It 

 is a facile criticism, and like most facile criticisms, 

 essentially unsound. British agriculture survived the 

 crisis of the last two decades of the nineteenth century 

 only because it changed its system, and relied less upon 

 corn growing. The crisis was accentuated because of the 



