222 BRITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



promise of glad simshine. The sooner a brighter day dawns 

 the better will it be for England. 



Looking at this much discussed and sorely misunderstood 

 question in this way there certainly seems, at first sight, but 

 little hope of making anything of it. "We are met all aloug 

 the line with such a veritable host of discouragers, and others 

 who are influenced by self-interests, that what we regarded as 

 a perfectly simple matter, indeed as the common experience 

 and the common knowledge of the human race of an industry 

 that is as old as the hills, and as well understood as the simple 

 law that water will run down a hill but not up it, now seems 

 to be invested with all sorts of difficulties which reduce us 

 well-nigh to despair. Our friends and acquaintances cannot 

 help us because the greater part of them are liopelessly ignorant 

 of a question which should be as widely understood as the ftict 

 that it is more economical to turn raw cotton into calico than 

 to leave it standing in the fields; while the majority of the 

 people are entirely influenced by what the discouragers say, or 

 by those who have private interests to serve. 



If we turn to that popular educator — the Press — for help, 

 we find that, with a few notable exceptions, the newspapers 

 offer little encouragement to, nor advocate, a universal system 

 of agriculture. Between this host of pessimists, dissuaders, and 

 others, those who hunger after the land find themselves between 

 the " devil and the deep sea," and so they leave the land to 

 look after itself, just as it has been left for the last half century 

 and more, uncared for, profitless, and a standing reproach to 

 the country. 



Now, whatever may be said to the contrary by this formid- 

 able host of discouragers, there is not only money in the land, 

 but good money, too. But, like money that is found in every 

 other industry, it has to be sought after, properly located, and 

 then dug out by hard, honest work, and the application of 

 the self-same essentials to success — brains, skill, enterprise, 

 assiduity, and the rest of it, as are necessary to success in other 

 occupations. 



The Eoad to Success 



We are never likely to succeed in anything in this world 

 unless we first of all form clear conceptions of what it is we 

 Wish to essay ; satisfy ourselves that the thing is reasonably 

 practical, that it, indeed, forms one of the well-known occupa- 

 tions of human life, and that it offers to the essayer every 

 reasonable chance of success. 



This is the attitude assumed by all sorts and conditions 

 of men when dealing with economical questions of every 



