5°2 



NA TURE 



[October 14, 1922 



as in part responsible. From an abstract point of 

 view the ordinary English tenant farm of 200 to 500 

 acres is no longer the economic unit it once was. At 

 its inception it represented wholesale large scale pro- 

 duction as compared with the generality of European 

 farming, and as such it provided the food needed for 

 the early industrial development of the country. 



But with the enormous extension of wheat growing 

 and meat production in the newer countries, the effect 

 of which upon our markets began to become so apparent 

 from the 'seventies of last century onwards, and with 

 modern organisation of the import trade in food pro- 

 ducts from countries with a low wage standard, the 

 English farmer no longer controls prices, and when he 

 stands alone, he is selling as a retailer in a market 

 dominated by much larger interests. It has become 

 a terribly difficult market because Great Britain is 

 now the one absolutely free emporium to which the 

 surplus food products from every other food-producing 

 country in the world are directed. With one or two 

 minor exceptions (Denmark and Belgium are prac- 

 tically free-trade countries, but they are normally food 

 exporters rather than buyers), the British farmer is 

 met by a tariff wall whenever he has a surplus to export 

 or a speciality to develop, and these difficulties are, at 

 the moment, accentuated by the break in the Con- 

 tinental exchanges, which diverts to Britain even the 

 limited quantities of food-stuffs the foreign industrialist 

 had begun to purchase. 



Some of these difficulties may be overcome by co- 

 operation, never an easy matter to organise in a con- 

 servative community such as our farmers form, bred 

 as they have been in an individualist organisation of 

 business and imbued with the characteristic British 

 tradition of standing alone. In any case, co-operation 

 may be only a palliative ; the economic flaw in the 

 tenant-farming system probably is that the unit of 

 management is too small. There is not work for a 

 master in controlling the five to ten men employed on 

 the ordinary English farm ; as a managing head one 

 man should be able to supervise the working of 1000 

 to 2000 acres, according to the class of land. Economic 

 pressure would thus appear to be tending to move 

 away from the present type of British farm in two 

 directions, either towards the single-man holding, un- 

 economic as an instrument of production but in which 

 compensation is found in the extra labour the occupier 

 will give in exchange for his independence, or on the 

 other hand, towards the really large farm which can 

 take advantage of machinery and organisation. 



Lord Bledisloe's main contention is that the land- 

 owner must either take the latter option and become the 

 instructed business head of his estate treated as a single 

 farm, or if he prefers not to take over the actual manage- 

 NO. 2763, VOL. I 10] 



ment, he must at least be the leader and entrepreneur of 

 the associated businesses of his tenants. Not only is the 

 holding of land a bad investment, but in a modern State 

 the mere rent receiver will eventually be eliminated. 

 Landlords must give service or perish as such, and 

 Lord Bledisloe appeals to a class which has a long and 

 honourable tradition behind it of service to the State 

 to return to the land and so render a necessary service 

 to a State that is becoming overweighted on the in- 

 dustrial side. He points out the two directions in 

 which the landowner can lead his tenants and benefit 

 both his estate and the course of agriculture. In the 

 first place, the farmer to-day is not getting his fair 

 share of the prices the consumer pays for food. While 

 all the producing interests connected with the land are 

 unprosperous and are being forced to contract their 

 activities, the trading organisations which, deal in the 

 produce of land are paying handsome dividends and 

 individual middlemen are growing rich. The con- 

 sumer reviles the farmer because of the scarcity of 

 food ; the farmer knows he must restrict his production 

 in order to make it pay at present prices, while the 

 slightest production above the normal demand cuts 

 away not merely profits but often cash returns, as may 

 be seen over plums and potatoes at the moment. The 

 distributing trade has entrenched itself in order to retain 

 its war scale of margin, and the building famine in the 

 country hinders the growth of competition. Lord 

 Bledisloe gives a series of tables to show the discrepancy 

 between retail and farmers' prices and the increase of 

 that discrepancy since the war ; in most cases the 

 distributing trades take more than half the price the 

 public pays. Coarse ' middlings ' cost more than wheat, 

 and readers of the Times a few days ago may have 

 noticed that on the same day the price of London flour 

 was put up while wheat was, in another column, 

 reported as cheaper. 



It is to this state of things Lord Bledisloe recom- 

 mends landowners to turn their attention ; can they 

 not organise the businesses of their farmers into some- 

 thing capable of keeping the middlemen in check ? 

 They should be able to see further than the farmer, 

 who has to look after his own business of production. 

 Co-operation has made but little headway among 

 farmers themselves ; would it not be in a very different 

 position if it had been whole-heartedly and intelligently 

 backed by the landowners ? Here is one opening for 

 intelligence and leadership on the part of owners of 

 land. 



The other great opening is in connexion with educa- 

 tion and research. The old race of landlords numbered 

 among them great improvers of farming, such as 

 Weston, Townshend, Coke, and Lawes. Even the 

 much-abused farming covenants represented, to begin 



