LAND TENURES 251 



enormous nunibors of cattle, (.'ows pay l)etter than steers, and 

 perhaps two-thirds or tbur-lil'ths of the cattle reared in many 

 of the European states are milkers. 



AVhat Holland does 



In Holland, where the land is nearly all water-logged, the 

 people have built up a great industry by devoting the land to 

 the only thing it is suited for — grazing; and they have done 

 it wisely, and with due regard to the principles of strict 

 utilitarianism. They leave the raising of large herds of steers 

 to those countries which possess prairies and pampas and almost 

 limitless areas of grazing land ; and because they know that a 

 given area of grass land will support only a certain number of 

 cattle, they go in for cow-rearing almost exclusively, for out of 

 this a vast number of people may be supported, while the grow- 

 ing of beef merely supports the grower and the butcher. The 

 Dutch farmers regard the growing of cattle for food purposes 

 as the most wasteful, unfruitful system of farming that could 

 possibly be devised, and they leave it alone. 



What Britain should not do 



The United Kingdom is the only country in the world 

 which has followed the topsy-turvy plan of turning her ricli 

 arable land into pasturage, and then, singularly enough, adoi)t- 

 ing a system of cattle and sheep-rearing which is the most 

 wasteful and unproductive and the least suited to the needs of 

 a small country where every acre should be tilled and utilised 

 to its utmost capacity in support of the people. The English 

 farmer resorts to this thriftless, senseless method because it is 

 said to be the one thing that pays best ; and this fact alone 

 affords overwhelming evidence of the degeneracy of the present 

 system, and the hopeless condition of the entire industry. 



Then, in spite of the fact that labour trouldes press us 

 sorely, and Unemployment has become a veritable curse to the 

 country, turning the social and economic conditions upside 

 down and rendering it well-nigh impossible to live in our fair 

 land in comfort and peace, the laud, the agricultural industry, 

 instead of being regarded as the great labour-employer and the 

 national industrial sheet-anchor, is becoming more attenuated 

 and useless each year as the result of allowing more land to 

 go out of cultivation. The number of persons employed on the 

 land is not only the smallest of the four countries cited, but 

 it is by far the smallest in Europe. There is a vast area of the 

 finest land in the world waiting to be tilled, and nobody to till 



