12 JULY 1930, Page 14

On the question of more home food, especially more wheat,

an ardent Scottish Member of Parliament waved like a flag of challenge that prophetic book of Prince Kropotkin's : Farms, Factories and Workshops. It should be much better known, and might well be published with a preface as long as the book itself, showing how Kmpotkin's ideas have been promoted and realized since his day. Its lessons, however, can be mis- interpreted. It does not follow that because in a garden by careful lllll nipulation one grain of wheat can be made to produce fifty straws and yield a thousandfold and more in grain that therefore ninety bushels to the acre is an economic ideal : the wheat-farmer who trebled his yield might still lose money, might, indeed, lose more money. It is one of the saddest features of the farm that farmers often pray for light crops—at any rate in hay—that need less labour for garnering.