THE STATE AS FARMER 27 



of agriculture. But the fruit farm of, say, 

 a hundred acres provides a still more striking 

 illustration. The strawberry, for instance, 

 needs two outlets. It must get away quickly 

 under the best conditions from the farm to 

 the householder, so that its delicious message 

 may reach child and afternoon tea-party 

 promptly and in dainty form, with, as it 

 were, the bloom upon it ; and it must also 

 have, in order to make its first outlet more 

 successful, a quick entry into the jam factory 

 of the district. The strawberry cannot wait 

 as long even as the egg for collection : it 

 must go at once to meet its colleague the 

 cream, or its guardian the preserving sugar. 

 Raspberries and currants are in like case. 

 A dreadful season of rain is bad enough for a 

 fruit farm, but the present market and trans- 

 port, as now conducted, are worse. That a 

 country like ours should turn away with a 

 shrug when its food of the most perfect kind 

 is allowed to rot is astounding. Before the 

 war some of us preached the need of more 

 care of our fruit in the interest of those 

 sickly faces in the slums who try to extract a 

 taste of strawberry from samples which look 



