270 
Bagshot Heath is very apt to ask why this land 
is not reclaimed and made to grow crops. The 
question is not a new one. Whenever war has 
come prices have gone up, and in the old days, 
when there was less regard than now for public 
rights, people did not hesitate to enclose any land 
they thought suitable. The result is that our 
present waste lands have already been picked over 
several times, and therefore only the least desirable 
are left. Some of the land reclaimed in older 
periods of high prices has gone out of cultivation 
and could be brought back, but not all of the 
wastes are suitable, even if the very troublesome 
questions of public and other rights could be 
solved. A survey is badly needed of the wastes 
of the country; there are no statistics giving the 
information needed, and the loose talk about mil- 
lions of acres of reclaimable land does not forward 
matters. 
A more promising direction is to displace other 
and less valuable crops by wheat. Of these the 
most suitable is grass. Mr. Middleton recently 
showed that the German farmer feeds 70 to 75 
people per 100 acres, while the English farmer 
feeds 4o to 45 only. It is not that the German 
gets so much more per acre, but that he has two- 
thirds of his land in arable and only one-third in 
grass; while in England only one-third is arable 
and two-thirds is grass. Now grassland only 
produces about one-half as much food as arable. 
Many suggestions have been made for breaking 
up grassland. From the theoretical point of view 
this course is eminently sound. Unfortunately, 
there are grave economic objections. Grassland 
involves so little risk that it serves as a useful 
counterpoise to the larger risks of arable farming. 
It is of no use disguising the fact that farmers 
are not breaking up their grassland, and they 
meet every appeal with the statement that they 
cannot afford to do so. - Various ways of meeting 
their difficulty have been suggested, but as they 
are mainly political they need not be discussed 
here. 
This leads up to the economic factor. The 
farmer grows wheat for profit and not for pleasure, 
and when he is presented with a scheme for in- 
creasing his yield his first question is, ‘‘ Will 
it pay?” There is a limit set by soil, climate, and 
the plant itself, beyond which growth will not go. 
Our average wheat crop is 32 bushels; a good 
farmer will look for 40, in specially good seasons 
he may get 50, but 60 bushels would represent & 
crop he had heard about but probably never seen. 
There being this limit to the amount producible, 
the main economic factor becomes the selling: price. 
This is complicated by the circumstance that 
wheat takes many months to produce, so that a 
rise in price does not induce a corresponding in- 
crease in the supply unless there is good reason 
to suppose that the increase will recur when the 
new crop is ready. Thus wheat is now 78s. per 
quarter, but this circumstance is not so pow erful 
an incentive to an increase in area as it looks, 
because the wheat sown now-will not be ready for 
sale until October or November, 1917, by which 
NO. 2458, VoL. 98] 
NATURE 
[DECEMBER 7, 1916 
time the price may be down to 30s., or even less. 
On the other hand, a run of low prices is a power- 
ful deterrent for a long tithe. For years after 
the low prices of the early ’nineties farmers were 
very shy of growing wheat, and even up to the 
time of the war they were always, afraid that low 
prices.might come back. 
Lord Milner’s Committee proposed to overcome 
this difficulty by guaranteeing a minimum price to: 
farmers, and thus using a supply even though in 
particular years the arrangement might involve a 
charge on the national finances. It is argued that 
in this case the community would be better off than 
it is on present lines, where prices sometimes fall 
very low and sometimes rise considerably higher.. 
Of course, such a guarantee on the part of the 
community wouid involve a corresponding obliga~ 
tion on the part of the farmer, and the precise ad- 
justment of these obligations affords scope for con- 
siderable political ingenuity. : 
The labour question is partly, but not entirely, 
bound up with the question of cost. The gross 
return) per acre obviously fixes the amount of 
money the farmer can afford to spend on the crop, 
and of this only a portion can be allotted to labour. 
So long as the work is done, it is immaterial to- 
the consumer whether labour’s share goes to few 
or to many. From the labourer’s point of view, 
however, this is very important; and as he does 
not like low wages, and as, further, he can often 
get much higher pay on the railway or other work, 
no small difficulty has arisen on farms where the 
efficiency of the labourer is low, and where, there- 
fore, a good many labour-hours are rede to 
produce an acre of crop. 
This difficulty can be met by increasing the 
labourer’s efficiency and so reducing the number of 
labour-hours. Machinery can be made to help in 
two ways: by doing a given piece of work with 
fewer men and by doing it in less time. In either 
case the labourer gains more money, unless the 
machine swallows up the whole. It is certain that 
considerable possibilities are opened up here. To 
take a single instance: On an ordinary farm the 
ploughing of an acre of land takes one man and 
two horses a whole day, or on some soils it needs — 
aman, a boy, and three horses. In the writer’s. 
district the usual rate of pay for such work is 
about 3s. for the man, and normal prices and 
yields would not justify much more. But with a 
motor-plough one man can plough three or four 
acres per day. The cost of the implement is more 
than that of a plough and two horses, so that more 
has to be allowed for interest and depreciation. 
But there is still a sufficient balance left to 
justify the payment of a higher wage to the man,, 
and therefore to induce him to remain on the land. 
It is impossible to foretell the extent of the 
revolution caused by the internal-combustion 
engine. It has given us motor-cars and aero- 
planes, and thus revolutionised travel by land and 
by air, and now it is being applied on the farm. 
For the moment it is being treated as if it were a 
strange kind of horse, and simply hitched on to 
the old horse implements. But it is conceivable 
