The Organisation oj the Indusir]). 23 



application of capital and labour to its development, 

 notwithstanding that some portions were as highly farmed 

 as any land in the world." Lord Ernie, writing in 191 2 

 ("English Farming," p. 401), said: — "Thousands of 

 acres of tillage and grass land are comparatively wasted, 

 underf armed and undermanned." The opinion of Sir A. 

 D. Hall, w-riting in 1910 (" A Pilgrimage of British 

 Farming," p. 150), after surveying conditions in many 

 countries, is as emphatic. " Though the best of these men 

 still maintain the supremacy of British farming over that 

 of any other country, nothing is more striking than the 

 contrast between them and some of their neighbours. In 

 every district we visited we found good and bad farmers 

 close together, men who are earning good incomes on one 

 side of the hedge, and on the other men who are always 

 in difficulties, who in many cases are only kept going 

 through the tolerance of their landlords. Sometimes a 

 man always manages to scrape his rent together, but he 

 lives miserably, his farm is an eyesore and a source of 

 weeds and infection to his neighbours. As a rule these 

 backward men are not unacquainted with the art of 

 farming ; they know how it should be done, and can be 

 very critical of other people's management, especially of 

 a college or county council farm near them. What they 

 lack is determination, the ability to organize their labour 

 and to manage their business ; they are not ignorant but 

 slipshod." In the preface to his book, " Agriculture After 

 the War," he writes, " Some of my friends will consider 

 that I have been unjust to the farmers of the country, and 

 will refuse to accept my assurance that they are among the 

 minority whose standard of work I desire to see universal. " 



