38 
Continuous Corn Growing. 
compare it with what it is now, and in respect of the crops 
which it has borne from 1861 to the present day; also to see 
whether the system of continuous corn growing has, on the 
whole, “paid,” and whether the land has been impoverished 
or the reverse. 
At the same time it is impossible to disregard certain features 
peculiar to the farm which have exercised an important bearing 
on the results, and which have to be taken into consideration 
when judging of the possible extension of the system elsewhere. 
Chief among these has been the fact that, though three miles 
from Sawbridgeworth station (G.E.R.), the farm is yet within 
reach of the London market. Consequently there exists a 
ready sale for corn, straw, and hay. In the earlier periods it 
was Mr. Prout’s practice to sell by auction the crops as they 
stood in the field, and the purchasers reaped and took them 
away. Later on, when the “bad times” came, this could 
no longer be done, and since 1880 the crops have had to 
be harvested in the usual way, the corn threshed out and 
sold, and the straw put up in stacks, where however it has 
always obtained a ready sale by auction to London and 
other dealers. 
An auction sale of hay and straw is held every year in the 
spring, and it is open to any one to note the prices then paid 
and so to check Mr. Prout’s estimates in regard to the produce 
he obtains and what it brings him in. Similarly, the corn is 
sold at current market rates, and if the produce be put at the 
market price of the time, a fair estimate may be obtained of the 
money return. Against these would be set the items of seed, 
manure, labour, harvesting, &c., together with rent, rates, &c., 
and a balance may be accordingly struck. In respect of these 
items the present Mr. Prout, as his father before him, has been 
always perfectly open, and if any one should ask, “Does the 
system pay?” the best answer, one of the present writers 
thinks, is supplied in the fact that, though Mr. Prout, sen., 
has been dead over ten years his son still continues the same 
system, while those who know his circumstances, know too 
that he would have abundant ground for giving it up if it no 
longer “paid” him. He might very well say that he had given 
it a sufficient trial and had demonstrated that it could, under 
favourable circumstances, be quite well pursued. But, on the 
contrary, he goes further, and asserts that even under latter-day 
conditions, all of them so prejudicial to corn growing, he can 
still, taking one year with another, make it “pay,” while his 
land, too, has suffered no depreciation. 
Mention has been made of the preliminary steps taken by 
the late Mr. Prout to get the land into order. Something may 
now be said of prominent features in the cultivation, which 
