250 



BEITAIN FOE THE BUTTON 



Here is a terrible disclosure, and one that constitutes a 

 sweeping condemnation of the British system. While the 

 United Kingdom employs and supports less than one-eighth 

 of her population in agriculture, Germany employs more than 

 one-third, France employs more tlian one-half, and Hungary 

 more than three-fourth fi, of their population on the Land. 



Here, then, the British people liave presented to them a 

 number of agricultural paradoxes and anomalies. On the one 

 hand, we, who profess to make a speciality of live-stock rearing 

 by turning our best aralde land into grazing lands and rich 

 meadows, find that all those countries which have converted 

 their grazing lands and meadows into arable, beat us hands 

 down in live-stock rearing, (lermany, for example, produces — 



{a) Four times as many horses. 



(h) Three and a quarter times as many cattle. 



(c) A Less Number of Sheep (more than compensated for 

 by excess number of pigs). 



{d) Nine times as many pigs. 



Damning Peoof against the British System 



Now, of all the damaging, damning evidence that can 

 possibly be brought as to the utter worthlessness of our 

 agricultural system, this is surely the most convincing. Here 

 we have further clear, unmistakable proof, set before us year 

 by year in unemotional statistical works of reference, that we 

 are shamefully beaten by neighbouring States in the one branch 

 of the great agricultural industry in which we lay ourselves 

 out to excel, which fact in itself surely forms a sweeping, 

 condemnatory indictment of our wasteful and futile methods, 



Europe, recognising that she has not the limitless grazing 

 areas at her command which are to be found, for example, in some 

 of our great Colonies, in Argentina, and in the States of South 

 America, wisely restricts her cattle-growing operations to certain 

 limits. Her rich arable land pays better to cultivate than to 

 graze, and, as a rule, only low-lying or waste land is devoted to 

 pasturage. Yet, in spite of this fact, Europe succeeds in rearing 



