OLD-FASHIONED METHODS 



27 



But if wheat remained constantly at, say, the 1913 

 price, even the best farmers could not afford to pay the 

 wages which are required to attract soldiers to the 

 land.i Agriculture must be given stability of prices — 

 not a guarantee of high prices, but protection against 

 unprofitably low prices. 



As for the ordinary farmer, he does not think of 

 agriculture as an industry in the conventional sense of 

 the word at all. He keeps no accounts ; he has never 

 penetrated the mysteries of a ledger ; he conceives 

 typewriters and telephones to be remote inventions 

 possibly convenient to " black-coated " people, but 

 of no use to him. As he sees farming it is not a business 

 in which money may be made, but a means of providing 

 a living for himself and his family — that and no more. 

 It is an amiable view, admirable in its unworldliness, 

 but it is not business. If the farmer has " something 

 over " at the end of the year he has had a good year ; 

 in all other years it is lawful to grumble, though, to be 

 sure, he has kept himself and his family. 



It is all of a piece with this temper that the farmer 

 should bring more and more land down to grass instead 

 of increasing the fundamental food of the people. As 

 things are, it would be ridiculous to blame him. He 



1 The varjdng prices of British wheat may be seen in the fol- 

 lowing table : 



