I have been writing of particular points that are curious
and suggestive, and worth attention from amateur experimenters. The application of electricity to the more general purposes of the farm is another question. Everyone who has visited the Fast Grinstead farms, or indeed some of the Danish and Swedish farms, will nurse the conviction that electricity is no longer a luxury. It is a necessity of the present economics of a farm. It is a wage saver. A good many operations—for example, operating a cream separator, pumping water, chaff cutting, are performed at a tenth, it may be at a fiftieth, of the cost of human labour, even if the current is dear. The new advance in the practical application of light and power is associated with a more or less novel group of small and very portable machines, which can be trundled to any part of the homestead where they are wanted. They can be operated by men who know nothing whatever about electricity, by the simple device of pressing a button. They are foolproof ; and, what is not less important on a farm, designed to be weather- proof and dustproof. Some of these minor adaptations made for the sake of the rough and ready ways, traditional and perhaps necessary on a farm, may make all the difference. The use of such health-giving and labour-saving devices on British farms will advance rapidly if some of the electrical authorities, now quite candidly hostile to encouraging its rural uses, will undergo a change of heart and turn their energies to the provision of cheap light and power for culti- vators. * * * *
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