52 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 



capital is kept together, and made fully and freely and 

 safely applicable for the everyday work of the farm, 

 agriculture must come to a standstill. Where money 

 and brains have free scope, even bad soils can be made 

 to earn something. Where the tenant is tied down to 

 unprofitable systems, or where his capital is nibbled away 

 by rents which are not made out of the land, and which 

 more than absorb profits, the best land must soon 

 deteriorate, and the position become hopeless. And if 

 one man breaks and goes in the bad times, his successor 

 has to expend what capital he has in trying to get the 

 land in condition again, and then has no more to go on 

 with. That appears to be the obvious lesson to be 

 drawn both from the history of the decay of agriculture 

 in the depressed districts, and still more from the 

 examination of the causes and conditions of the instances 

 of more or less profitable farming that have been brought 

 before the Commission. 



