Country Life
WHEN FARMING PAID. _
British farming was most prosperous when the market- was local ; and social as well as economical advantages accrued from the co-operation between producer and consumer. The dweller in village and small town knew by personal expe- rience that his well-being depended on the farmer's harvest. A great part of the ills of our rather lop-sided civilization have arisen from the blind, silly and damaging opposition—often foolishly emphasized in the written word—between producer and consumer, between countryman and townsman, between farm labourer and industrialist. They have become ludic- rously out of touch, to the loss of both. The producer sells cheap and the consumer buys dear and, what is more, buys stale, and therefore unwholesome, stuff. To give,two personal experiences, I once found greengrocers in Newbury, in Berk- shire, ordering their vegetables from Covent Garden ; and at the very worst period of a slump in potatoes, when tubers were almost unsaleable and rotting in the clamps, the poor in Southwark were buying at the rate of £10 to £12 a ton.
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