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The Land : By Agricola 
IT is at once right and necessary that the State should 
play a great part in the re-establishment of agriculture ; 
and this not only during the remainder of the war, but 
for a long time after peace ; perhaps for good. The 
. reasons of this are so obvious that mere negative 
criticism is foolish, and may be neglected. But it is important 
to render people famiUar (before it is too late) with the 
practical truth that mere State action without a strong 
natural system on which to act, and without the highest 
elasticity in the whole arrangement, will be disastrous. 
At the bottom the cause of this danger is the unfortunate 
fact that Great Britain, which from time immemorial had 
been a country of farmers, has become a country of large 
towns in the last fifty years. That l^s happened, and its 
immediate consequences to-day are inevitable. It is unfor- 
tunate so far as character and happiness are concerned ; 
on the other hand, it has increased the power and the wealth 
of the country ; at any rate, the thing is done. 
It may seem surprising to use the phrase the last fifty 
years. We are so familiar with the idea of England becoming 
"industrialised" in the eighteenth century that the setting 
of so short a term for our final transformation will astonish 
the reader. But the truth is that an even shorter period 
might more accurately express tlie truth. 
What determines the occupational character of a society 
is partly the numbers engaged in various kinds of work, and 
partly the- way in which the governing medium of that 
society is more in touch .with one kind of work than another. 
The Country ^Frame of Mind 
Now, it is an interesting fact that, in spite of the tremendous 
industrial revolution of 1760-1850, the people of this island 
were still living for the most part under agricultural condi- 
tions as late as the Crimean War. Even up to a date as 
late as 1870, or so, a clear majority probably, and certainly 
close upon a half of the whole population, were still in what 
one ma}/ call "the country frame of mind." This does not 
mean that if you had taken a statistical table of occupations 
at that moment you would have found the agricultural 
occupation to be predominant. Far from it. But the older 
men and -women already working at town things were still, 
for the most part, agricultural in thei^ up-bringing ; there 
was still a strong agricultural effect of travel and association 
upon the towns. The domestic family Hfe of the Enghsh 
village still dominated experience — the experience of living 
people. Save in the largest towns, agriculture was a neigh- 
bouring thing even to the townsman. That class which 
still governed England was still half agricultural and had 
its real home in the country houses. The effect of the small 
cathedral city, of the medium squires, of the countryside in 
general, was very strong. Men still thought of the great 
■ industrial towns as a sort of chaos or disease. 
The institutions of England as late as the 'seventies— and 
later — reflected this strong surviving tradition. They were 
still parochial, individual, familiar and free. 
The really great change has come within the memory of 
men actively at work to-day. It has come since the 
'seventies. To-day our popular education, our arrangements 
for the relations between employer and emploj'ed, our 
reading matter, our hours, all that we do, is based upon the 
town model. There has even appeared an appreciable 
. divorce between the wealthier directing classes and the land. 
They have come to contain a preponderating number un- 
familiar with the use of land. 
It is a hard saying, but a true one. The soul of England 
is still rooted in the soil ; but the mode of public thought, 
even in that which governs and directs, is now already a 
mode bred by the town : by the modern large industrial 
town wliich has lost all touch with the fields. While in the 
mass of the people a generation has ari.sen whose fathers 
and mothers (now dead) were indeed of the countryside, 
but which itself has nothing but a town experience. . 
This phase in the long history of England will pass — or, 
rather, will be modified. The fields are coming back to 
their own. But we_^must be careful that in transition no 
irremediable errors are committed. 
This transformation of the nation from a mainly agricul- 
tural to a mainly industrial condition has effects upon 
Government action which are not always appreciated. Every 
one can see that the town population is quite different from 
the country population. Every one can, after a little 
thinking, set down the main features of this difference. For 
instance, the town population is less cohesive. Each house- 
hold stands separate from its neighbours. The country 
population is one in which everybody knows about everyr 
body else, in which actual neighbourhood is the test of 
familiarity. A town population lacks traditions ; a country 
population is built upon them. A town population can be 
worked up to an artificial and excited opinion on any matter 
through the Press. A country population is interested only 
in that of which it has full personal experience. You can, 
through a Press campaign, make a pubUc man detested or 
supported by a town population. You cannot make a big 
local squire detested or supported in his own neighbourhood 
by the printed word. Men know all about him, and his own 
character is his witness. 
Lack of Personal Interest 
Again, the town population has very little direct personal 
interest in its own industrial productions, whereas agricul- 
tural produce is the whole concern of the country population. 
This last point has nothing to do with what Socialists- call 
"exploitation." It is a question of the manner of life. A 
manufacturer who employs a turner at a lathe may "exploit" 
him (that is, make a profit out of him) or the reverse according 
as he manages well or ill. His employee's lack of interest in 
the final product has nothing to do with the fact that a 
profit may or may not be made out of him ; it is due to the 
fact that an imperfect product is handed to him ; that he 
adds to it only one mechanical repeated monotonous process, 
and that then it passes out of his hands. But the country 
population, capitahst or proletariat — ownfcr, farmer, or 
labourer — feels a direct personal interest in the whole busi- 
ness of agricultural production from the first stage to the 
last. This alone creates between the two types of activity 
a contrast of the utmost moment to the State. Again, the 
townsman depends helplessly upon great organisations which 
he cannot control ; which transport him, provide 'him with 
his food and his water, and all the rest of it. The country- 
man is in touch with everything by which he lives, and 
himself handles nearly all of it and so forth. The 
contrast is complete. 
All this we know — and much else in the great distinction 
between the townsman and the countryman tq-day. What 
is not so clearly appreciated is the subtle effect of this dis- 
tinction upon the mind of those who govern, and especially 
upon their host of servants in the administrative work of 
the State. 
The civil servant — almost in proportion to his excellence — 
is to-day a townsman. He thinks in terms of what he calls 
"efficiency" and "organisation." He tabulates figures in a 
few categories. His labels are abstractions. For instance, 
revenue is for him the result of "investment." Pieces of 
paper pass, and the machinery of society provides a certain 
purchasing power as the result. But he himself makes 
nothing, nor ever comes in contact with those who do. He 
standardises. He sees things in great nominal groups. He 
is impatient of things highly individual and different ; he is 
impatient of complexity. Also, his kind of work teaches 
him the value of rapidity : the waste involved in all delay, 
which he conceives as the result of mere mis-judgment, 
inefficiency, or sloth. 
Such ^a man, then, brought in contact with agricultural 
processes, meets an alien thing. The prime truth about 
agricultural work is its enormous complexity, which includes 
a vast diversit}' in effort, long periods before the result of 
effort can be fully appreciated, and minute, detailed experi- 
ence in the very corners and pockets of the work. The 
tilling of the earth is the most artistic because it is the earliest 
and most necessary of human affairs ; and it is tliis character 
which may most fatally be neglected and (through inter- 
ference with it or misunderstanding of it) most disastrously 
misused in the near future, unless we are very careful of 
how we go to work. 
It is this which gives pecuHar value to the formation of 
strong local committees who ought to have co-ordinate 
powers with anyone who may be deputed from the central 
Government to inquire into local agricultural conditions and 
to aid them. Of how such committees might be formed, 
and what their powers might be, we will deal later. But, 
meanwhile, we will turn in the next article to prac ical 
examples that should show what the complexity of agricul- 
tural work is and the consequent necessity for some highly 
elastic method of dealing with it. 
