16 



Development on a 1,500-Acre Faem. [Apr., 



The head of stock on the estate is a large one. In addition 

 to the pigs previously mentioned there are 72 horses and usually 

 about 200 head of cattle, but in spite of this a vast quantity of 

 London dung has to be imported every year, this importation 

 being necessitated by the presence of so large an acreage of 

 strawben-ies and market garden crops in the scheme of cultiva- 

 tion. 



In its present condition the estate offers a remarkable demon- 

 stration of the results that can be achieved by enterprise and 

 organisation when these are backed by capital. To an undiscern- 

 ing eye no material could have appeared less promising than this 

 tract of country as it stood previous to 1909 : water-logged and 

 weed-ridden, without roads, isolated, and altogether poverty- 

 stricken. The task of developing such land might well have 

 seemed not only insuperably difficult, but hardly worth while. 

 Yet at the present time one finds that, instead of the 29 men 

 permanently employed on it in 1909, there are no less than 150 

 men and 50 w^omen {i.e., 9 men and 3 women per 100 acres), 

 and, moreover, that at certain periods of the year, such as the 

 fruit-picking season, 200 extra men and women are required. 

 In addition to this, the amount of produce taken from the land 

 annually has enormously increased. 



It is hardly necessary to emphasise the value to the community 

 of the work which has been briefly outlined in the preceding 

 pages : the increase in the resident population of this area and 

 the increase in its productivity are facts which have an unmistak- 

 able significance. But it is, perhaps, worth while pointing out 

 the violent contrast between the use made of capital at Shippea 

 Hill and its misuse in certain other parts of these islands. In 

 the one case we see a low state of cultivation turned into a high 

 one, and a great increase taking place in the resident population ; 

 while, in the other, we have the spectacle of a low state of culti- 

 vation becoming a state of no cultivation at all, and a population 

 being literally driven into towns or overseas to earn its livelihood. 

 There can be no question as to which of these courses is designed 

 to benefit the nation. 



