226 r.RITAIN FOR THE BRITON 



unless every misconception in respect hereto be removed and 

 a more rational view of the entire question set up in their 

 place, agriculture will continue to pine and languish. 



Success only Possible to those who command it 



What right has any man to expect that, unless he applies 

 the same brains, knowledge, experience, skill, capital, assiduity, 

 and energy to agriculture as must necessarily be applied to all 

 other industries before success can be hoped for, he will succeed? 



Why should ignorance, want of knowledge, lack of experi- 

 ence, shortage of capital, combined very frequently with feeble 

 effort, absence of assiduity, and a flabby conception of thrift, 

 hope to succeed in agriculture when it is well known that such 

 an undesirable stock-in-trade would be bound to ensure failure 

 in every other industry ? 



Once these misconceptions are understood by those engaged, 

 or wish to become engaged, in agriculture, there is no reason 

 why a man should not make a decent living, even under the 

 present foolish and malign conditions with which past wrong- 

 headedness has invested the industry. 



But, let it be organised under proper tenures, assisted by the 

 State, and helped onward by co-operation, support, and sympathy, 

 and the people given the same chances of working agricul- 

 ture to the best possible results as are given in every country 

 of the world — except our own — and the city clerk and his 

 typist wife, the grocer's assistant, the Manchester warehouse- 

 man and lawyer's clerk, the briefless barrister, the struggling 

 doctor, the penniless literati, and a host of other earnest, 

 willing, and capable men who now suffer from a congested 

 labour market in all trades and professions, will have an 

 excellent opportunity of turning their talents to account. 



Failures there are bound to be in agriculture as there are in 

 every industry, but the capable man who essays agriculture is 

 bound to rise if the chance be given him. 



t3^ 



Demand creates Supply in all Industpjes 



It is just here that your discourager waxes eloquent. " How 

 do you propose to find several millions of capable agriculturists 

 out of the overplus of your town populations whicli must 

 necessarily include the dregs of the unemployed and the unem- 

 ployaNe ? Nice farmers they would make," says lie. The answer 

 is simple enough. There is no proposal to permit so valuable 

 an asset in the national economy as the Land to be seized upon 

 Ijy the dregs of the unemployed, or by wastrels of any degree. 



