AmAP°rnr;wSoarm'}         Lands  Where  Drugs  Grow.  157 
does  not  obtain  in  the  British  Islands.  Many  of  the  formerly  great 
estates  are  now  at  the  best  only  poor  dairy  farms.  Many  of  the 
ducal  owners  have  entered  the  once  despised  trades ;  as  one  of 
them  tersely  expressed  it,  "  farms  now  are  poor-paying  truck." 
Possibly  some  of  these  gentry,  now  so  rich  in  land  and  titles,  but 
poor  in  purse,  might  retrieve  their  depleted  rent  rolls  by  giving 
over  a  portion  of  their  acres  to  growing  drug  plants.  Altogether, 
it  seemed  to  me  that  if  any  one  country  might  attain  supremacy  in 
the  drug-culture  industry,  it  should  be  England.  At  the  present 
time  there  are  numbers  of  successful  growers  of  strictly  medicinal 
plants  in  the  British  Islands.  The  names  of  many  of  them  are 
familiar  to  the  American  trade  :  Ransom  &  Sons,  Hitchin  ;  Peter 
Squire  &  Sons,  Stafford  Allen  &  Sons,  Ampthill,  Bedfordshire.  In 
addition  to  these,  there  are  several  cultivators  of  small  portions  of 
land.  Other  medicinal  plants  have  become  naturalized  and  are  col- 
lected from  the  wild  or  spontaneous  growths ;  and  thus  drug-grow- 
ing and  gathering,  taken  altogether,  is  a  considerable  industry  in  the 
British  Isles. 
A  number  of  economic  problems  are  involved  in  this  industry. 
At  the  prevailing  prices  the  drug  farming  by  itself  would  bring  but 
poor  returns.  The  English  as  well  as  the  Continental  drug  cultu- 
rists  succeed  largely  by  reason  of  other  industries  to  which  plant 
culture  is  an  adjunct.  In  England  it  would  be  impossible  to  secure 
at  a  reasonable  price  laborers  enough  to  harvest  any  large  crop  if 
the  labor  required  for  a  few  weeks  were  all  that  could  be  offered. 
The  large  growers,  therefore,  conduct  laboratories  where  extracts 
are  prepared  and  where  oils  are  distilled.  They  are  thus  enabled 
to  keep  their  laborers  employed  at  all  seasons  of  the  year.  English 
growers  must  meet  Continental  competition ;  prices  and  wages  on 
the  Continent  are  lower  than  in  the  British  Isles,  to  the  great  ad- 
vantage of  the  Continent  in  cost  of  production.  In  the  more 
thickly  settled  portions  of  the  Continent,  however,  wages  are  ad- 
vancing, and  this  industry  is  being  crowded  more  and  more  from 
the  old  centres,  and  mainly  toward  the  East  and  North  into  regions 
where  labor  is  still  cheap. 
On  the  Continent  wild  plants  are  gathered  by  a  low  grade  of 
peasant  labor,  including  women,  children  and  aged  or  decrepit 
people,  who  are  content  to  receive  the  lowest  wages.  Some  drug 
gatherers  earn  as  little  as  10  pfennigs  (2^  cents)  per  day.  While 
