438 GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 



provided by a 2OOO-acre farm on good land with 

 an adequate backing of capital. But we are rather 

 deficient at present in the kind of men to run a 

 business of the kind the highly educated expert 

 that we find in charge of the great domains in 

 Germany or the syndicate farms in France. Land 

 agents, speaking generally, are better qualified as 

 solicitors or accountants than as farmers ; their educa- 

 tion has been legal rather than scientific. The 

 manager we have in view begins with a scientific 

 education and learns his business as assistant on 

 some other estate; despite his university training, he 

 is a good deal more practical than the rule-of-thumb 

 farmer, for he has put his science into bookkeeping 

 and business organization, he has trained himself to 

 face facts and act on them, instead of on sentiment 

 and tradition. The difficulty in England is to get 

 the right sort of start in life for the promising student 

 from an agricultural college or university ; farmers, 

 however big their businesses, do not employ skilled 

 assistants or managers ; of the system and organization 

 found in any other business of half the size there is 

 none. Many of the big farms are excellently managed, 

 but all depends on the one man's instinct and 

 memory ; for very often he keeps no books beyond 

 a cash record, sometimes he lets his bank pass-book 

 serve even for that, while his dealings are jotted down 

 on the backs of envelopes and the like. He makes 

 money because he is shrewd, spends little on his 

 ventures, and because the land makes it for him, 

 but often he is wasting great opportunities. This 

 cheap and slipshod management is perhaps chiefly 

 seen where men were allowed to put farm to farm 

 when things were at their worst twenty years ago ; 

 in the arable counties cases are to be found of men 



