406 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



Now, in the case of the farmer there is no possibility of 

 removing the disadvantages of some as compared with 

 others. Land which is naturally poor can never be made 

 equal to that which is naturally fertile ; neither can a farm 

 be moved bodily near to a market or to a railway. The 

 competition between different farmers is, therefore, not a 

 fair one. As more land is cultivated and more surplus 

 grain produced, those having the advantage in land and 

 situation will get their produce earliest to market ; and 

 those who come later, when the market is already well 

 supplied, must take a lower price. Year by year, as the 

 output of grain increases, the price becomes lower still, till 

 it reaches a point at which those worst situated cannot 

 afford to grow it at all. Then either the worst farms go 

 out of cultivation, or some other crops are grown, or the 

 owner, burthened with mortgages, is sold out, and his farm 

 is perhaps joined to another, and goes to form one of the 

 great capitalist farms, which are another means of driving 

 down prices below the level at which the less favoured 

 farmers can make a living. 



Many people argue, that, if large farming pays where 

 small farming will not pay, that large farming therefore 

 produces more food and is better for the country. But 

 this is a great mistake. The farms which are measured by 

 thousands of acres rarely produce so much per acre as the 

 small farms of fifty or a hundred acres. In the former the 

 object is to reduce the cost of labour to a minimum, and so 

 leave a larger profit to the owner. Whether in Australia, 

 Dakota, or California, the great machine worked farms only 

 produce from about eight to twelve or twenty bushels of 

 wheat an acre ; but on ten thousand acres a very small profit 

 per bushel will give a large income, while the same profit 

 on a much larger produce per acre will starve the small 

 farmer. In 1879 the wheat produce of the United States 

 varied in the several States from an average of seven 

 bushels an acre in North Carolina and Mississippi, to 

 nineteen and twenty bushels in Michigan and Indiana ; 

 and in the bad year, 1884, the range was from five bushels 

 to twenty bushels. But as these are the averages of 

 whole States, the produce of the several farms must have 



