CHAPTER III. 



ECONOMIC SOLUTIONS OF THE PKOBLEM. 



Agriculture as a business is advancing. Its rewards 

 to-day are very much greater than ever before. And 

 the efficiency of its service to human need is even greater 

 than the rewards have been. 



A comparison of the agriculture of England five hun- 

 dred years ago with that of the present is informing. 

 " In those days half the arable land lay in fallow. The 

 amount produced was to take wheat as an example, 

 about eight bushels the acre in ordinary years less 

 than a third of an average crop at the present time. 

 There were no artificial grasses. Clover was not known, 

 nor any of the familiar roots. As a consequence there 

 was little or no winter feed, except such coarse hay as 

 could be made and spared. Cattle were small, and 

 stunted by the privations and hard fare of winter. The 

 average weight of a good ox was under four hundred- 

 weights. Sheep, too, were small, poor, and came slowly 

 to maturity. The average weight of a fleece was not 

 more than two pounds. With ill-fed cattle there was 

 little or no strong manure. Iron was very dear, cost- 

 ing, to take wheat as a standard of relative value, nine 

 times as much as it does now. But the number of per- 

 sons engaged in agriculture was nearly as numerous 

 as it now is. It embraced, to be sure, nearly the whole 

 population, though all their labor did not produce an 



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