vi PREFACE. 



developing at home a more intensive agricultural pro- 

 ductivity, either by improving the now existing 

 methods of extensive agriculture, by means of small 

 holdings, " inner colonisation," agricultural education, 

 and co-operative work, or by introducing different new 

 branches of intensive agriculture. This country is 

 especially offering us at this moment a most instructive 

 example of a movement in the said direction. And 

 this movement will certainly result, not only in a 

 much-needed increase of the productive forces of the 

 nation, which will contribute to free it from the inter- 

 national speculators in food produce, but also in 

 awakening in the nation a fuller appreciation of the 

 immense value of its soil, and the desire of repairing 

 the error that has been committed in leaving it in the 

 hands of great land-owners and of those who find it now 

 more advantageous to rent the land to be turned into 

 shooting preserves. The different steps that are 

 being taken now for raising English agriculture and 

 for obtaining from the land a much greater amount of 

 produce are briefly indicated in Chapter V. 



It is especially in revising the chapters dealing with 

 the small industries that I had to incorporate the 

 results of a great number of new researches. In so 

 doing I was enabled to show that the growth of an 

 infinite variety of small enterprises by the side of the 

 very great centralised concerns is not showing any 

 signs of abatement. On the contrary, the distribution 

 of electrical motive power has given them a new 

 impulse. In those places where water power was 

 utilised for distributing electric power in the villages, 

 and in those cities where the machinery used for pro- 

 ducing electric light during the night hours was utilised 

 for supplying motive power during the day, the small 

 industries are taking a new development. 



