COUNTRY LIFE
A VISIT to the Western side of England has more than ever convinced me that the agricultural critics, who dogmatically recommended large farms and centralised organisation of groups of farms, wholly forgot the difference between East and West. I would make my point not by any half abstract argument, but by a simple description of one Western farm. It consists not of the 8,00o acres that the planners desire, but of just So ; and in spite of the smallness (or because of it?) provides its owner and two grown sons with a good income. The three work with the more joy and efficiency that the place is their own, and they can continuously improve farm and homestead. Each year more fruit trees and bushes— apples, cherries, plums, gooseberries, black currants and blackberries—are planted. One line of cherries had been grafted by the farmer, and, as he had prophesied, the operation was a success up to too per cent. No graft had failed, and so skilful was the manipulation that it was extremely difficult to detect the place of the graft. The Eastern planners all argue that the small man cannot afford to buy the necessary machines and that a high degree of mechanisation is necessary. Well, the latest purchase on this little farm was a motor-sprayer—it looks like a midget submarine— which will throw any spray to the height of the tallest fruit tree and finish the job in comparatively few hours. The high cost of the machine
was well within the compass of this smallholder, and he was very proud of his possession. Such men, with their native skill in such crafts as grafting, in the management of machinery, in the arts of planting and pruning, are in the true tradition of the mediaeval craftsman. It is important that the agricultural labourer should be enabled to earn a good wage by reaching a high man-hour ideal ; but it is much better to multiply farmers than to multiply landless labourers, and this can only be done by intensive work on comparatively small farms. The yeoman may still be the backbone of England. To recommend his extinction is a sort of high treason.
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