26o SECTIONAL ADDRESSES 



English counties ; or better still, experiment for yourselves under your 

 own, your very own, scheme of management. It may be that management 

 in some cases is so superbly good that it hardly matters what a man sows, 

 while in others it may be so supremely bad that no proper use can be 

 made of a good thing when a man has got it. 



I am afraid I have adopted an unusual course in my approach to my 

 subject ; I have not followed normal practice, for instead of reviewing 

 the data and evidence available I have in effect reviewed my own reactions 

 to the implications of the work with which I have been connected for the 

 past twenty-five years and more. Perhaps I need not apologise for this, 

 for after all facts and data are of no practical use until people grapple 

 with the practical implications. Instead of my ' facts ' — and scientific 

 ' facts ' are not always correct — I have put my grapplings before you, 

 that is all, and if justification is necessary I think sufficient justification is 

 the admittedly deplorable condition of a huge acreage of this country, 

 the dilapidated condition of many of our farms and farmsteads, and the 

 therefore necessarily backward state of much of our farming. Two 

 needs seem to me to be crystal clear : first, the conduct of a survey on the 

 land — and I believe every agricultural scientist, though perhaps not every 

 farmer and every economist, would agree to ' on the land ' somewhat 

 on the lines I have suggested — and then the ways and means of getting 

 the plough into the grasslands that the survey conclusively proves ought 

 to be ripped up. Working capital, and the correct expenditure of that 

 working capital, is in the last resort the only solution for our derelict and 

 quasi-derelict acres. 



I like the American idea of loans with a working plan ; of loans with 

 advice. I do not believe that the history of the years since about 1894 

 show that the spasmodic periods of agricultural prosperity that have on 

 occasion intervened have been responsible for a great deal of land im- 

 provement, or for a proportionate improvement in the equipment 

 necessary for productive farming. Prosperity as such in agriculture, as 

 in industry, is to a large degree a function of equipment, for without the 

 necessary equipment it is impossible to farm economically, just as it is 

 impossible to manufacture economically. 



Again, it is unreasonable to expect that a man devoid of working capital, 

 and probably the son of a man similarly devoid, should have all the 

 knowledge of how best to farm, and particularly of how best to improve 

 land (in which art he will necessarily have had no sort of experience), 

 in sympathy with adequate working capital suddenly provided for the 

 purpose. Advice, and some measure of control, must necessarily go 

 with credit facilities, and in so far as breaking up grassland is concerned 

 I like still better the American idea of group loans, and of a ' master 

 borrower.' The ' master borrower ' in this case would be set up as a 

 contractor with tractor and necessary equipment to break up the grass- 

 lands, for it is important to remember that ploughing up of this sort is 

 essentially tractor work, that it interferes with the normal routine of an 

 ill-equipped farm, while tractors are to all intents and purposes nc«i- 

 existent in many of the districts where wholesale ploughing up is most 

 necessary. My own experiences are interesting in this connection. We 



