CHAPTER XXXII 



A SYNOPSIS 



Many questions of gi-ave importance to the people liave been 

 considered in these pages, and those who have been interested 

 enough to follow the writer so far have doubtlessly been im- 

 pressed by the many facts that have been revealed, and the 

 enormous need which exists for general enlightenment on the 

 vastly complicated yet fundamentally simple agricultural ques- 

 tion, and of the other questions involved therein. So many things 

 have become manifest that it would be as well to bring them 

 together synoptically, so that at least the main features of the 

 questions dealt with may be easily recognised. 



The Fundamental Blunder about the Land 



The first thing that becomes clear — save to those Mho have 

 some purpose to serve in maintaining existing conditions — is, 

 that whatever else happens, the Land must be set free to work 

 out its appointed destiny. 



No man having a plot of ground, and no country having 

 millions of acres, can, under any economic conditions known 

 to the people of the earth, afford to allow that land to lie 

 uncared for, untilled, and unproductive, because to do so would 

 be to set up an artificial condition of economics which would 

 surely result sooner or later in disaster. To cultivate the soil 

 is to obey a Natural Law, not to do so is to disobey it ; and 

 in the history of the world there is not a single instance on 

 record of a country having disobeyed that inexorable Law with 

 impunity. 



In this age of rapid progress and much learning, men are 

 apt to deride and set at naught many of the old laws and 

 customs as being foolish and antiquated. Among them, the 

 cultivation of the land has fallen into desuetude because 

 "Economic Science" told the people it could be given up to 



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