Room for the Machine
For the moment the battle inclines in favour of the destroyers. A great many hedges are being grubbed, and close clipping that almost amounts to destruction is in evidence along a great many roads. The treatment certainly improves the roads ; •and did not an American visitor last year complain almost bitterly that the hedges spoiled his vision of the landscape ? The Norfolk hedges are, of course, being dug up to give full play for the new machines ; and the plan for the particular farms is interesting. The farmer owns two which are several miles apart. He congregates all his machines at one and his horses at the other. One year one farm grows chiefly sugar beet and the other wheat or barley. The farmer has a few odd crops and will sometimes feed sheep on catch crops, but the essence of his system is alternation between sugar beet and wheat, both of which bring immediate money. His estimate for the cost of pro- ducing wheat by aid of the new machines is so low that it would be scarcely safe to quote his figure. The machines include a Diesel engine tractor which uses a good deal less of the crudest and cheapest oil than other tractors use of petrol.
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