£50 AN ACRE
It happens to me in the midst of such fields and such memories to receive a little book called " How to Make £00 an Acre," representing a yearly profit in excess of the capital freehold price of much land, though well equipped with its homes and houses. What does it say on the subject ? Part of it is historical. Mr. Seabrook, an Essex farmer—and Essex land is stern—perceives, on the eve of the bad times beginning in the late 'seventies, that his wheat and his stock are growing cheaper, that it is odds against a profit being earned ever again. The virgin lands and the wide spaces, that may he reaped with wide machines and gathered in the mass, the grass plains of the Argentine and Australia, with the aid of cold storage and rapid ships, will altogether over-handicap the old and island farmer among his hedge-rows. Wheat and meat travel cheaply and easily ; but there is much that dOeS not. There are things that grow best on a Northern island among hedgerows. Travelled milk goes foul, and travelled soft fruits become pulp. The temperate climate of Britain produces incomparable flavour, thins the skin and refines the quality not of one sort of fruit but of many : apples, strawberries, currants and the rest.
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