THE STATE AS FARMER 5 



his crops and stock when he has grown them, 

 for notices are being given freely that the 

 railways will not collect ; feudalism and the 

 commercial fraternity — an ill-omened con- 

 junction — are stronger than ever in their 

 grip upon the land. And yet it is to the 

 commercial solution in its true aspect that we 

 must turn if we want to change failure into 

 success. In other words, we must treat our 

 cornfields, orchards, and pastures as if they 

 were in the hands of one vast commercial 

 undertaking with orders to get all that is 

 possible out of them just as if they were 

 factories for munitions of war. At least this 

 is what I shall try to prove in the following 

 pages. I hope that I may deter no one, not 

 even ' the landed gentry ' themselves, from 

 considering the problem and its solution by 

 my manner of presenting them. There is 

 sufficient inertia in the subject itself to make 

 it a difficult one. It is but too true that 

 a party or a government only moves when 

 public opinion is behind it ; yet here it would 

 be like waiting for munitions until the in- 

 habitants of our almshouses had moved. 

 There is no person or class specially interested 



