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United Kingdom has to be paid for these commodities and ser- 

 vices very largely in agricultural produce. Furthermore, the United 

 Kingdom is the open agricultural market of the world, for though 

 Denmark and Belgium are equally free, they have not the wealth 

 to attract a great volume ot international trade, and in consequence 

 every developing country wishing to sell corn or meal or other 

 foodstuff must make an effort to secure a footing in the British 

 market. And many countries, especially our own colonies, exert 

 themselves to secure this footing by devices which the abstract eco- 

 nomist might designate as unfair or at least unsound, i. e. by 

 bounties on exportation, more often by services rendered in .the 

 way of organisation, sometimes by assisted freights and reduced 

 rates. At any rate the net result is to focus on the British farmer 

 an exceptionally severe competition, the competition of every other 

 country in the world that has agricultural produce to export. 



Nor does the competition end here; the British Islands are so 

 small that the manufacturing districts and the towns set the standard 

 of wages and of what we might call expenses of administration. 

 It is true that the agricultural labourer in many districts still re- 

 ceives a wage which on paper is far below that of the workers in 

 the towns, but the disparity is not so great as it appears, and with 

 the freedom of communication that now prevails we may take it 

 that the farmer has to pay very little less than the manufacturer 

 for the same class of labour. 



" Farming is, afterall, a very primitive occupation and whatever 

 skill or scientific assistance may be brought to its assistance, it 

 still cannot be hustled into growing two crops in one year, nor 

 organised into ensuring the most profitable type of weather ; it 

 therefore fits in with a somewhat primitive community and finds 

 a difficulty in carrying all the burdens of a high civilisation. 



" Twenty or thirty years ago, when the successive waves of 

 agricultural depression were beating upon the landowner and far- 

 mer, many men accepted this point of view and mentally jettisoned 

 agriculture as a factor in British life ; let it die naturally and quietly, 

 they thought, and leave the countryside as the playground ot the 

 town dweller. Even when this opinion was not avowed or even 

 recognised it was still operative in the apathy and neglect with 

 which all agricultural matters were regarded, But since that time 

 a considerable shift of public opinion has taken place; the coun- 

 tryman is seen to fee of value as constituting the most stable and 

 the most healthy class in the State, until the sociologist would now 



