THE MODERN BEE-FARM 259 
wife no longer goes to her dairy, nor makes any of 
the good old farmhouse things that served to up- 
hold country England in days gone by; and how 
the master-agriculturists now are the sinews of the 
great London Stores, while the little local shop- 
keepers are left to the field-labourer with his 
twelve or fifteen shillings a week. 
For the class of small-holders that must now 
multiply throughout the length and breadth of the 
land, there is awaiting an enterprise—a source of 
livelihood—as yet hardly tapped. A stock subject 
of envy with most artisans is the capitalist who 
leads an easy life while his factory hands toil for 
him. But if the small-holder will take up bee- 
keeping, he too can look on, to a large extent, 
while his thousands of winged labourers are filling 
his storehouse with some of the most useful and 
saleable merchandise in the world. It is a truism 
in commerce that a good supply creates a demand 
just as certainly as that the universal want of a 
thing stimulates its production. One of the needs 
in England to-day isa full, good, and cheap supply 
of honey ; and when this is forthcoming there will 
be little fear but that the present demand will 
increase hand over hand. 
There are many reasons why the people should 
choose honey for their principal food rather than 
the beet sugar which is now so largely consumed. 
In the first place, honey is a pure, natural, un- 
doctored sweet, while in the manufacture of 
17—2 
