34 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 



Another thrifty, hardworking man, who has been 

 farming thirty 3^ears, has done all the drainage and 

 roads and other permanent improvements, lived hard 

 and farmed high, and has taken a prize in North Lanca- 

 shire for the best managed farm of mixed husbandry, 

 has made farming pay well every year, and has made an 

 independence out of nothing.^ 



What can be done by such men is shown in his state- 

 ment. He bought, in 1892, a water-logged and wrecked 

 farm of 120 acres for ^^2640, sold it at once for £20^ 

 more, and took it on lease at 14s an acre. He has 

 already expended ;^ 1,200 in improvements, has grown a 

 heavy crop of potatoes, and expects to recoup his out- 

 lay in two years. He says emphatically, " High farming 

 pays. What we have to do is to produce." "'' 



Again, a small farmer with sixty-three acres, which he and 

 his father have worked for thirty-six years, says, "Through- 

 out all this agricultural depression I have farmed on 

 lines which have proved successful." He, too, favours 

 high farming. " It is far better to have a small farm and 

 farm it really well, than a big one and to farm it in- 

 differently." He attributes his success to prompt laying 

 down to grass when he found crops did not pay the 

 cost of production.^ 



But it is plain that this man and a large proportion of 

 the Lancashire farmers have been holding their own 

 partly because their children work on the farms without 

 wages, and so effect a considerable economy in labour. 



The comparative immunity from the worst features 

 of depression noted in North Yorkshire is largely attri- 

 buted by Mr Pringle to scientific stock farming and to 

 the economy as regards food, manure and labour, effected 

 by covered yards, concentrated buildings, and manure 

 tanks. The southern farmer, " with his cold, wet, waste- 

 ful, open yards, cannot compete with " this practical and 

 effective equipment of stock farming in the north. Corn 

 is now wholly subordinated to stock, much of the barley 

 and wheat being " fed," and oats largely supplanting 



' Wilson Fox, Garstang, p. 6o. 

 '-^W. Fox, II, 436. sji^^^o. 



