Country Life
STOCK OR STUFF ?
A good example of the view that the battle of the world is not between bad and good but between rival goods is the present controversy of the specializers or machinists versus the general farmer. It is of vital national importance that it should be fought out ; and therefore to return to the subject needs no excuse. Mr. Orwin, the arch-machinist, is a little sad that he has been misunderstood. The essence of his view is this : and I quote from a letter of his : What I want to convey is that farmers should got away from the idea that there is any essential connection between the production of crops and the production of livestock and its products. Thus, a farmer can be a specialist and yet produce a certain variety of things, if he will consider his amble farming as a thing to be con- ducted without any necessary reference to the dung-cart and the sheep-fold, and if he will consider his livestock farming without any reference to the place of turnips, &c., in the arable farming rotation. By all means let him mix up his work if he likes, but let him run each branch of it as a thing apart from the rest, carried on in the cheapest possible way, and not as one part of a complicated interlocking system."
The ablest opponents of the specializing system can lay stress on the fact that Mr. Orwin generalizes from no more than three or four instances ; Mr. Chamberlain, Mr. Hosier and Mr. Bayliss figure over and over again, because they are a lone hand ; and in one case initial success was followed by ultimate loss. There is something in the objection ; but pioneers are always few ; and instances are being slowly multiplied. In the wholly excellent " Progress in English Farming " series, issued by the Oxford School, a new pamphlet with a new example is about to appear.
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