Page:The Land Question.djvu/15

15 summers from 1875 to 1883 the farmers of this country have sustained losses with regard to which it is hardly possible to use the language of exaggeration. The amount of tenants' capital lost in these years is reckoned by Sir James Caird at about £150,000,000. This loss has been partly in the actual death of sheep and cattle, partly in the money thrown away in agricultural operations which year after year have produced next to nothing. And now, when we have at last had a good harvest, the price of wheat has fallen so low that there is no profit to be made out of it. Of course there are some foolish people who tell the farmer that he ought to get a duty put upon foreign wheat to keep up prices. These are the worst enemies the farmer has; and the first thing that the agriculturist or the land-reformer ought to get into his head is that wheat will very possibly never again be grown in this country at a profit. A certain quantity of it must of course be grown for straw, and for supplying flour to the farm, but the money which the farmer is to make must be made out of something else. What then ought to be produced? The answer is, what does the consumer want? And what, that can be as cheaply produced at home, does he pay £30,000,000 a year to obtain from abroad? First, and on the largest scale, meat, butter, cheese, and milk; then, in the second rank, and on a smaller scale, eggs, fruit, poultry, vegetables. To produce enough meat for consumption, a great quantity of land that is now arable will have to be laid down in pasture; and this process is in fact extensively going on. During the last few years statistics show that nearly a million acres have been transferred from the plough to grass. But now comes a very striking fact, and one on which a great deal hinges. Though a million acres have been turned into grass, there is no increase in the number of cattle. The meaning of this is, that the farmer's capital is gone, and that he has not the means of getting a sufficiency of stock even when the land is laid down in grass. This is only one of a multitude of facts all pointing in the same direction, facts familiar to everyone who goes about among farmers, and who sees how much their way of life has changed during the last few years. The money is not there to conduct the business as it ought to be conducted; and until money comes in, it is hopeless to expect English farming to fulfil its proper function,