THE EXTENSION OF PASTURES 3 



Not the least of a farmer's anxieties is the grave difficulty 

 as to labour, which appears to become more acute in every 

 succeeding year. I agree that work for the rural population 

 ought to be found on the land. But on their side, most of 

 the able-bodied labourers have refused to live and work in the 

 country, even where farmers are in a position to pay them. 

 Landowners and farmers have been privileged to educate the 

 labourers' children, with the result that the latter remain long 

 enough at school to acquire a distaste for agricultural life, and 

 the pick of the boys and young men flock into towns, leaving 

 the feeble, incapable, and infirm to work on the farms. So 

 that, having paid an education rate and abolished school fees, 

 farmers find as a result that the efficiency of labour is 

 diminished, while the cost is seriously augmented. Those 

 farmers who still employ a considerable number of labourers 

 would not object to pay the increase in wages were it possible 

 in return to obtain as good a day's work from the men as their 

 fathers gave for less money, but no such willing or capable 

 labour is now available. 



It may be freely admitted that the laying down of arable 

 land to grass is bad for the nation, not only because the land 

 does not produce so much food when in grass as it does under 

 the plough or under spade cultivation, but because there is 

 less scope for the employment of labour on pastures than on 

 arable land. 



Unfortunately, the question which agriculturists have to 

 consider is neither the most productive method of cultivating 

 land, nor the system which will employ the largest number of 

 labourers, but the most certain way of farming land to avoid 

 loss. Landowners and farmers cannot be expected to till the 

 soil at a ruinous sacrifice unless the nation is prepared to pay 

 for such benefit out of the public purse. Until it is considered 

 reasonable that men should beggar themselves for the national 

 good, cultivators must be free to farm in the way that 

 promises the best return for the capital and skill devoted to 



