218 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 



accurate account of the produce they get, and although it 

 is constantly asserted that it is impossible to grow wheat 

 on a small scale, yet these allotments produce 4 105. 

 more an acre than all the surrounding farms of Buck- 

 inghamshire. And what is more, he finds that the 

 labourers' produce per acre is higher than that of the best 

 scientific farmers in England ; so that actually the poor 

 labourer, working by himself on his own plot of land, can 

 produce for us more wheat per acre than the most 

 scientific farmer with all his skill. 1 Take these estimates 

 together 33 per acre, 14 per acre, and 4 10s. per 

 acre, and that gives an average of net gain to the country 

 of 17 for every acre of land cultivated by poor men in 

 small quantities compared with the same land cultivated 

 by farmers in large quantities. Now just think what a 

 gain that would be to the country if the people, instead 

 of being driven from the rural districts for want of land, 

 had been encouraged to remain and cultivate the land for 

 themselves. I have calculated the average gain at 17 

 an acre. But if, to avoid any exaggeration, we lower this, 

 and say only 10 per acre, and if we suppose that out 

 of the fifty millions of acres of cultivatable land a con- 

 siderable part of which is now going out of cultivation 

 only twenty millions of acres were cultivated by 

 poor men in this minute and careful manner, and that 

 they obtained 10 per acre of increased produce, that 

 would give us 200,000,000 a year of extra wealth 

 produced by poor men, and almost every penny of that 

 200,000,000 would be spent on the manufactures of the 

 country. 



Now that, in my opinion, indicates the method by 

 which we may finally get rid of this terrible depression of 

 trade, which is still increasing and is likely to increase, 

 because we have been hitherto falsely guided by the 

 political economists and by the great manufacturers, the 

 speculators, financiers, and others. We have always been 

 led to believe that our one line of business was manu- 

 facturing, that we were to be the manufacturers of the 



1 See The Land and the Labourers, by Rev. C. W. Stubbs, 1884. 

 Swan Sonnenschein and Co. 



