Chapter III: The Possibilities of Agriculture (2)

Let me add also that all this wonderful culture has entirely developed in the second half of the nineteenth century. Before that, it was quite primitive. But now the Paris gardener not only defies the soil--he would grow the same crops on an asphalt pavement--he defies climate. His walls, which are built to reflect light and to protect the wall-trees from the northern winds, his wall-tree shades and glass protectors, his frames and _pépinières_ have made a real garden, a rich Southern garden, out of the suburbs of Paris. He has given to Paris the “two degrees less of latitude” after which a French scientific writer was longing; he supplies his city with mountains of grapes and fruit at any season; and in the early spring he inundates and perfumes it with flowers. But he does not only grow articles of luxury. The culture of plain vegetables on a large scale is spreading every year; and the results are so good that there are now practical _maraîchers_ who venture to maintain that if all the food, animal and vegetable, necessary for 4,500,000 inhabitants of the departments of Seine and Seine-et-Oise had to be grown on their own territory (3,250 square miles), it could be grown without resorting to any other methods of culture than those already in use--methods already tested on a large scale and proved to be successful.

* * * * *

And yet the Paris gardener is not our ideal of an agriculturist. In the painful work of civilisation he has shown us the way to follow; but the ideal of modern civilisation is elsewhere. He toils, with but a short interruption, from three in the morning till late in the night. He knows no leisure; he has no time to live the life of a human being; the commonwealth does not exist for him; his world is his garden, more than his family. He cannot be our ideal; neither he nor his system of agriculture. Our ambition is, that he should produce even _more_ than he does with _less_ labour, and should enjoy all the joys of human life. And this is fully possible.

As a matter of fact, if we put aside those gardeners who chiefly cultivate the so-called _primeurs_--strawberries ripened in January, and the like--if we take only those who grow their crops in the open field, and resort to frames exclusively for the earlier days of the life of the plant, and if we analyse their system, we see that its very essence is, first, to create for the plant a nutritive and porous soil, which contains both the necessary decaying organic matter and the inorganic compounds; and then to keep that soil and the surrounding atmosphere at a temperature and moisture superior to those of the open air. The whole system is summed up in these few words. If the French _maraîcher_ spends prodigies of labour, intelligence, and imagination in combining different kinds of manure, so as to make them ferment at a given speed, he does so for no purpose but the above: a nourishing soil, and a desired equal temperature and moisture of the air and the soil. All his empirical art is devoted to the achievement of these two aims. But both can also be achieved in another and much easier way. The soil can be _improved_ by hand, but it need not be _made_ by hand. Any soil, of any desired composition, can be made by machinery. We already have manufactures of manure, engines for pulverising the phosphorites, and even the granites of the Vosges; and we shall see manufactures of loam as soon as there is a demand for them.

It is obvious that at present, when fraud and adulteration are exercised on such an immense scale in the manufacture of artificial manure, and the manufacture of manure is considered as a chemical process, while it ought to be considered as a physiological one, the gardener prefers to spend an unimaginable amount of labour rather than risk his crop by the use of a pompously labelled and unworthy drug. But that is a social obstacle which depends upon a want of knowledge and a bad social organisation, not upon physical causes.[63]

Of course, the necessity of creating for the earlier life of the plant a warm soil and atmosphere will always remain, and sixty years ago Léonce de Lavergne foretold that the next step in culture would be to warm the soil. But heating pipes give the same results as the fermenting manures at a much smaller expense of human labour. And already the system works on a large scale, as will be seen from the next chapter. Through it the productive powers of a given area of land are increased more than a hundred times.

It is obvious that now, when the capitalist system makes us pay for everything three or four times its labour value, we often spend about £1 for each square yard of a heated conservatory. But how many middlemen are making fortunes on the wooden sashes imported from Drontheim? If we only could reckon our expenses in labour, we should discover to our amazement that, thanks to the use of machinery, the square yard of a conservatory does not cost more than half a day of human labour; and we will see presently that the Jersey and Guernsey average for cultivating one acre under glass is only three men working ten hours a day. Therefore the conservatory, which formerly was a luxury, is rapidly entering into the domain of high culture. And we may foresee the day when the glass conservatory will be considered as a necessary appendix to the field, both for the growth of those fruits and vegetables which cannot succeed in the open air, and for the preliminary training of most cultural plants during the earlier stages of their life.

Home-grown fruit is always preferable to the half-ripe produce which is imported from abroad, and the additional work required for keeping a young plant under glass is largely repaid by the incomparable superiority of the crops. As to the question of labour, when we remember the incredible amount of labour which has been spent on the Rhine and in Switzerland for making the vineyards, their terraces, and stone walls, and for carrying the soil up the stony crags, as also the amount of labour which is spent every year for the culture of those vineyards and fruit gardens, we are inclined to ask, which of the two, all taken, requires less of human labour--a vinery (I mean the cold vinery) in a London suburb, or a vineyard on the Rhine, or on Lake Leman? And when we compare the prices realised by the grower of grapes round London (not those which are paid in the West-end fruit shops, but those received by the grower for his grapes in September and October) with those current in Switzerland or on the Rhine during the same months, we are inclined to maintain that nowhere in Europe, beyond the forty-fifth degree of latitude, are grapes grown at less expense of human labour, both for capital outlay and yearly work, than in the vineries of the London and Brussels suburbs.

At any rate, let us not overrate the productivity of the exporting countries, and let us remember that the vine-growers of Southern Europe drink themselves an abominable _piquette_; that Marseilles fabricates wine for home use out of dry raisins brought from Asia; and that the Normandy peasant who sends his apples to London, drinks real cider only on great festivities. Such a state of things will not last for ever; and the day is not far when we shall be compelled to look to our own resources to provide many of the things which we now import. And we shall not be the worse for that. The resources of science, both in enlarging the circle of our production and in new discoveries, are inexhaustible. And each new branch of activity calls into existence more and more new branches, which steadily increase the power of man over the forces of nature.

If we take all into consideration; if we realise the progress made of late in the gardening culture, and the tendency towards spreading its methods to the open field; if we watch the cultural experiments which are being made now--experiments to-day and realities to-morrow--and ponder over the resources kept in store by science, we are bound to say that _it is utterly impossible to foresee at the present moment the limits as to the_ maximum _number of human beings who could draw their means of subsistence from a given area of land_, or as to what a variety of produce they could advantageously grow in any latitude. Each day widens former limits, and opens new and wide horizons. All we can say now is, that, _even now_, 600 persons could easily live on a square mile; and that, with cultural methods already used on a large scale, 1,000 human beings--not idlers--living on 1,000 acres could easily, without any kind of overwork, obtain from that area a luxurious vegetable and animal food, as well as the flax, wool, silk, and hides necessary for their clothing. As to what may be obtained under still more perfect methods--also known but not yet tested on a large scale--it is better to abstain from any forecast: so unexpected are the recent achievements of intensive culture.

We thus see that the over-population fallacy does not stand the very first attempt at submitting it to a closer examination. Those only can be horror-stricken at seeing the population of this country increase by one individual every 1,000 seconds who think of a human being as a mere claimant upon the stock of material wealth of mankind, without being at the same time a contributor to that stock. But we, who see in each new-born babe a future _worker_ capable of producing much more than his own share of the common stock--we greet his appearance.

We know that a crowded population is a necessary condition for permitting man to increase the productive powers of his labour. We know that highly productive labour is impossible so long as men are scattered, few in numbers, over wide territories, and are thus unable to combine together for the higher achievements of civilisation. We know what an amount of labour must be spent to scratch the soil with a primitive plough, to spin and weave by hand; and we know also how much less labour it costs to grow the same amount of food and weave the same cloth with the help of modern machinery.

We also see that it is infinitely easier to grow 200,000 lb. of food on one acre than to grow them on ten acres. It is all very well to imagine that wheat grows by itself on the Russian steppes; but those who have seen how the peasant toils in the “fertile” black earth region will have one desire: that the increase of population may permit the use of the steam-digger and gardening culture in the steppes; that it may permit those who are now the beasts of burden of humanity to raise their backs and to become at last men.

* * * * *

We must, however, recognise that there are a few economists fully aware of the above truths. They gladly admit that Western Europe could grow much more food than it does; but they see no necessity nor advantage in doing so, as long as there are nations which can supply food in exchange for manufactured goods. Let us then examine how far this view is correct.

It is obvious that if we are satisfied with merely stating that it is cheaper to bring wheat from Riga than to grow it in Lincolnshire, the whole question is settled in a moment. But is it so in reality? Is it really cheaper to have food from abroad? And, supposing it is, are we not yet bound to analyse that compound result which we call price, rather than to accept it as a supreme and blind ruler of our actions?

We know, for instance, how French agriculture is burdened by taxation. And yet, if we compare the prices of articles of food in France, which herself grows most of them, with the prices in this country, which imports them, we find no difference in favour of the importing country. On the contrary, the balance is rather in favour of France, and it decidedly was so for wheat until the new protective tariff was introduced. As soon as one goes out of Paris, one finds that every _home produce_ is cheaper in France than it is in England, and that the prices decrease further when we go farther East on the Continent.

There is another feature still more unfavourable for this country: namely, the enormous development of the class of middlemen who stand between the importer and the home producer on the one side and the consumer on the other. We have lately heard a good deal about the quite disproportionate part of the prices we pay which goes into the middleman’s pockets. We have all heard of the East-end clergyman who was compelled to become butcher in order to save his parishioners from the greedy middleman. We read in the papers that many farmers of the midland counties do not realise more than 9d. for a pound of butter, while the customer pays from 1s. 6d. to 1s. 8d.; and that from 1½d. to 2d. for the quart of milk is all that the Cheshire farmers can get, while we pay 4d. for the adulterated, and 5d. for the unadulterated milk. An analysis of the Covent Garden prices and a comparison of the same with retail prices, which is being made from time to time in the daily papers, proves that the customer pays for vegetables at the rate of 6d. to 1s., and sometimes more, for each penny realised by the grower. But in a country of imported food it _must_ be so: the grower who himself sells his own produce disappears from its markets, and in his place appears the middleman.[64] If we move, however, towards the East, and go to Belgium, Germany, and Russia, we find that the cost of living is more and more reduced, so that finally we find that in Russia, which remains still agricultural, wheat costs one-half or two-thirds of its London prices, and meat is sold throughout the provinces at about ten farthings (kopecks) the pound. And we may therefore hold that it is not yet proved at all that it is cheaper to live on imported food than to grow it ourselves.

But if we analyse _price_, and make a distinction between its different elements, the disadvantage becomes still more apparent. If we compare, for instance, the costs of growing wheat in this country and in Russia, we are told that in the United Kingdom the hundredweight of wheat cannot be grown at less than 8s. 7d.; while in Russia the costs of production of the same hundredweight are estimated at from 3s. 6d. to 4s. 9d.[65] The difference is enormous, and it would still remain very great even if we admit that there is some exaggeration in the former figure. But why this difference? Are the Russian labourers paid so much less for their work? Their money wages surely are much lower, but the difference is equalised as soon as we reckon their wages in produce. The twelve shillings a week of the British agricultural labourer represents the same amount of wheat in Britain as the six shillings a week of the Russian labourer represents in Russia. As to the supposed prodigious fertility of the soil in the Russian prairies, it is a fallacy. Crops of from sixteen to twenty-three bushels per acre are considered good crops in Russia, while the average hardly reaches thirteen bushels, even in the corn-exporting parts of the empire. Besides, the amount of labour which is necessary to grow wheat in Russia with no thrashing-machines, with a plough dragged by a horse hardly worth the name, with no roads for transport, and so on, is certainly much greater than the amount of labour which is necessary to grow the same amount of wheat in Western Europe.

When brought to the London market, Russian wheat was sold in 1887 at 31s. the quarter, while it appeared from the same _Mark Lane Express_ figures that the quarter of wheat could not be grown in this country at less than 36s. 8d., even if the straw be sold, which is not always the case. But the difference of the land rent in both countries would alone account for the difference of prices. In the wheat belt of Russia, where the average rent stood at about 12s. per acre, and the crop was from fifteen to twenty bushels, the rent amounted to from 3s. 6d. to 5s. 8d. in the costs of production of each quarter of Russian wheat; while in this country, where the rent and taxes are valued (in the _Mark Lane Express_ figures) at no less than 40s. per each wheat-growing acre, and the crop is taken at thirty bushels, the rent amounts to 10s. in the costs of production of each quarter.[66] But even if we take only 30s. per acre of rent and taxes, and an average crop of twenty-eight bushels, we still have 8s. 8d. out of the sale price of each quarter of wheat, which goes to the landlord and the State. If it costs so much more in money to grow wheat in this country, while the amount of labour is so much less in this country than in Russia, it is due to the very great height of the land rents attained during the years 1860-1880. But this growth itself was due to the facilities for realising large profits on the sale of manufactured goods abroad. The false condition of British rural economy, not the infertility of the soil, is thus the chief cause of the Russian competition.

Twenty-five years have passed since I wrote these lines--the agricultural crisis provoked by the competition of cheap American wheat being at that time at its climax, and, I am sorry to say, I must leave these lines such as they were written. I do not mean, of course, that no adaptation to the new conditions created by the fall in the prices of wheat should have taken place during the last quarter of a century, in the sense of a more intensive culture and a better utilisation of the land. On the contrary, I mention in different parts of this book the progress accomplished of late in the development of separate branches of intensive culture, such as fruit-culture, market-gardening, culture under glass, French gardening, and poultry farming, and I also indicate the different steps taken to promote further improvements, such as better conditions of transport, co-operation among the farmers, and especially the development of small holdings.

However, after having taken into account all these improvements, one cannot but see with regret that the same regressive movement in British agriculture, which began in the ’seventies, continues still; and while more and more of the land that was once under the plough goes out of culture, no corresponding increase in the quantities of live stock is to be seen. And if we consult the mass of books and review articles which have been dealing lately with this subject, we see that all the writers recognise that British agriculture _must_ adapt itself to the new conditions by a thorough reform of its general character; and yet the same writers recognise that only a few steps were taken till now in the proper direction, and none of them was taken with a sufficient energy. Society at large remains indifferent to the needs of British agriculture.

It must not be forgotten that the competition of American wheat has made the same havoc in the agriculture of most European countries--especially in France and Belgium; but in the last two countries the adaptations which were necessary to resist the effects of the competition have already taken place to a great extent. Both in Belgium and in France the American imports gave a new impetus toward a more intensive utilisation of the soil, and this impetus was strongest in Belgium, where no attempt was made to protect agriculture by an increase of the import duties, as was the case in France. On the contrary, the duties upon imported wheat were abolished in Belgium precisely at the time when the American competition began to be felt--that is, between 1870 and 1880.

It was not only in England that the fall in the prices of wheat was felt acutely by the farmers. In France, the hectolitre of wheat (very nearly three bushels), which was sold at 18s. 10d. in 1871-1875, fell to 15s. 5d. in 1881-1885, and to 12s. 6d. in 1893; and the same must have been in Belgium, the more so as the protective duties were abolished. But here is what Mr. Seebohm Rowntree says about the effect of the prices in his admirable book on land and labour in Belgium:--

“For a time the Belgian agriculturist was hardly hit, but
gradually he adjusted himself to the new conditions. His
cultivation became more intensive, he made more and more use of
co-operation in various directions, and he devoted himself to new
branches of agriculture, especially the raising of live stock
and garden produce. He began to realise the value of artificial
manures, and to acknowledge that science could help him.”--_Land
and Labour_, p. 147.

These words by Mr. Rowntree are fully confirmed by the change in the general aspects of the Belgian agriculture, as they appear from the official statistical data. The same must be said of France. The above-mentioned fall in prices induced agriculturists to intensify their methods of culture. I have mentioned already the rapid spreading of agricultural machinery among the French peasants during the last twenty years; and I must mention also the equally remarkable increase in the amounts of chemical manure used by the peasants; the sudden development of agricultural syndicates since 1884; the extension taken by co-operation; the new organisation of transport with cool storage, or in heated cars, for the export of fruit and flowers; the development taken by special industrial cultures; and still more so the immense development of gardening in the South of France and market-gardening in the North. All these adaptations were introduced on such a scale that one is bound to recognise that the crisis has had the effect of giving quite a new aspect to French agriculture, taken as a whole.

* * * * *

Much more ought to be said with regard to the American competition, and therefore I must refer the reader to the remarkable series of articles dealing with the whole of the subject which Schaeffle published in 1886 in the _Zeitschrift für die gesammte Staatswissenschaft_, and to the most elaborate article on the costs of growing wheat all over the world which appeared in April, 1887, in the _Quarterly Review_. These articles were written at the time when American competition was something new and made much havoc in English agriculture, causing a fall of from 30 to 50 per cent. in the rents of land for agricultural purposes. But the conclusions of these two writers were fully corroborated by the yearly reports of the American Board of Agriculture, and Schaeffle’s previsions were fully confirmed by the subsequent reports of Mr. J. R. Dodge. It appeared from these works that the fertility of the American soil had been grossly exaggerated, as the masses of wheat which America sent to Europe from its north-western farms were grown on a soil the natural fertility of which is not higher, and often lower, than the average fertility of the unmanured European soil. The Casselton farm in Dakota, with its twenty bushels per acre, was an exception; while the average crop of the chief wheat-growing States in the West was only eleven to twelve bushels. In order to find a fertile soil in America, and crops of from thirty to forty bushels, one must go to the old Eastern States, where the soil is made by man’s hands.[67]

The same applies to the American supplies of meat. Schaeffle pointed out that the great mass of live stock which appeared in the census of cattle in the States was not reared in the prairies, but in the stables of the farms, in the same way as in Europe; as to the prairies, he found on them only one-eleventh part of the American horned cattle, one-fifth of the sheep and one-twenty-first of the pigs.[68] “Natural fertility” being thus out of question, we must look for social causes; and we have them, for the Western States, in the cheapness of land and a proper organisation of production; and for the Eastern States in the rapid progress of _intensive_ high farming.

It is evident that the methods of culture must vary according to different conditions. In the vast prairies of North America, where land could be _bought_ from 8s. to 40s. the acre, and where spaces of from 100 to 150 square miles in one block could be given to wheat culture, special methods of culture were applied and the results were excellent. Land was bought--not rented. In the autumn, whole studs of horses were brought, and the tilling and sowing were done with the aid of formidable ploughs and sowing machines. Then the horses were sent to graze in the mountains; the men were dismissed, and one man, occasionally two or three, remained to winter on the farm. In the spring the owners’ agents began to beat the inns for hundreds of miles round, and engaged labourers and tramps, both freely supplied by Europe, for the crop. Battalions of men were marched to the wheat fields, and were camped there; the horses were brought from the mountains, and in a week or two the crop was cut, thrashed, winnowed, put in sacks, by specially invented machines, and sent to the next elevator, or directly to the ships which carried it to Europe. Whereupon the men were disbanded again, the horses were sent back to the grazing grounds, or sold, and again only a couple of men remained on the farm.

The crop from each acre was small, but the machinery was so perfected that in this way 300 days of one man’s labour produced from 200 to 300 quarters of wheat; in other words--the area of land being of no account--every man produced in one day his yearly bread food (eight and a half bushels of wheat); and taking into account all subsequent labour, it was calculated that the work of 300 men in one single day delivered to the consumer at Chicago the flour that is required for the yearly food of 250 persons. Twelve hours and a half of work are thus required in Chicago to supply one man with his yearly provision of wheat-flour.

Under the special conditions offered in the Far West this certainly was an appropriate method for increasing all of a sudden the wheat supplies of mankind. It answered its purpose when large territories of unoccupied land were opened to enterprise. But it could not answer for ever. Under such a system of culture the soil was soon exhausted, the crop declined, and _intensive_ agriculture (which aims at high crops on a limited area) had soon to be resorted to. Such was the case in Iowa in the year 1878. Up till then, Iowa was an emporium for wheat-growing on the lines just indicated. But the soil was already exhausted, and when a disease came the wheat plants had no force to resist it. In a few weeks nearly all the wheat crop, which was expected to beat all previous records, was lost; eight to ten bushels per acre of bad wheat were all that could be cropped. The result was that “mammoth farms” had to be broken up into small farms, and that the Iowa farmers (after a terrible crisis of short duration--everything is rapid in America) took to a more intensive culture. Now, they are not behind France in wheat culture, as they already grow an average of sixteen and a half bushels per acre on an area of more than 2,000,000 acres, and they will soon win ground. Somehow, with the aid of manure and improved methods of farming, they compete admirably with the mammoth farms of the Far West.

In fact, over and over again it was pointed out, by Schaeffle, Semler, Oetken, and many other writers, that the force of “American competition” is not in its mammoth farms, but in the countless small farms upon which wheat is grown in the same way as it is grown in Europe--that is, with manuring--but with a better organised production and facilities for sale, and without being compelled to pay to the landlord a toll of one-third part, or more, of the selling price of each quarter of wheat. However, it was only after I had myself made a tour in the prairies of Manitoba in 1897, and those of Ohio in 1901, that I could realise the full truth of the just-mentioned views. The 15,000,000 to 20,000,000 bushels of wheat, which are exported every year from Manitoba, are grown almost entirely in farms of one or two “quarter-sections”--that is, of 160 and 320 acres. The ploughing is made in the usual way, and in an immense majority of cases the farmers buy the reaping and binding machines (the “binders”) by associating in groups of four. The thrashing machine is rented by the farmer for one or two days, and the farmer carts his wheat to the elevator with his own horses, either to sell it immediately, or to keep it at the elevator if he is in no immediate need of money and hopes to get a higher price in one month or two. In short, in Manitoba one is especially struck with the fact that, even under a system of keen competition, the middle-size farm has completely beaten the old mammoth farm, and that it is not manufacturing wheat on a grand scale which pays best. It is also most interesting to note that thousands and thousands of farmers produce mountains of wheat in the Canadian province of Toronto and in the Eastern States, although the land is not prairie-land at all, and the farms are, as a rule, small.

The force of “American competition” is thus not in the possibility of having hundreds of acres of wheat in one block. It lies in the ownership of the land, in a system of culture which is appropriate to the character of the country, in a widely developed spirit of association, and, finally, in a number of institutions and customs intended to lift the agriculturist and his profession to a high level which is unknown in Europe.

In Europe we do not realise at all what is done in the States and Canada in the interests of agriculture. In every American State, and in every distinct region of Canada, there is an experimental farm, and all the work of preliminary experiment upon new varieties of wheat, oats, barley, fodder and fruit, which the farmer has mostly to make himself in Europe, is made under the best scientific conditions at the experimental farms, on a small scale first and on a large scale next. The results of all these researches and experiments are not merely rendered accessible to the farmer who would like to know them, but they are brought to his knowledge, and, so to speak, are forced upon his attention by every possible means. The “Bulletins” of the experimental stations are distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies; visits to the farms are organised in such a way that thousands of farmers should inspect the stations every year, and be shown by specialists the results obtained, either with new varieties of plants or under various new methods of treatment. Correspondence is carried on with the farmers on such a scale that, for instance, at Ottawa, the experimental farm sends out every year a hundred thousand letters and packets. Every farmer can get, free of charge and postage, five pounds of seed of any variety of cereals, out of which he can get next year the necessary seed for sowing several acres. And, finally, in every small and remote township there are held farmers’ meetings, at which special lecturers, who are sent out by the experimental farms or the local agricultural societies, discuss with the farmers in an informal way the results of last year’s experiments and discoveries relative to every branch of agriculture, horticulture, cattle-breeding, dairying and agricultural co-operation.[69]

American agriculture really offers an imposing sight--not in the wheat fields of the Far West, which soon will become a thing of the past, but in the development of rational agriculture and the forces which promote it. Read the description of an agricultural exhibition, “the State’s fair,” in some small town of Iowa, with its 70,000 farmers camping with their families in tents during the fair’s week, studying, learning, buying, and selling, and enjoying life. You see a _national_ fête, and you feel that you deal with a nation in which agriculture is in respect. Or read the publications of the scores of experimental stations, whose reports are distributed broadcast over the country, and are read by the farmers and discussed at countless “farmers’ meetings.” Consult the “Transactions” and “Bulletins” of the countless agricultural societies, not royal but popular; study the grand enterprises for irrigation; and you will feel that American agriculture is a real force, imbued with life, which no longer fears mammoth farms, and needs not to cry like a child for protection.

“Intensive” agriculture and gardening are already by this time as much a feature of the treatment of the soil in America as they are in Belgium. As far back as the year 1880, nine States, among which were Georgia, Virginia and the two Carolinas, bought £5,750,000 worth of artificial manure; and we are told that by this time the use of artificial manure has immensely spread towards the West. In Iowa, where mammoth farms used to exist twenty years ago, sown grass is already in use, and it is highly recommended by both the Iowa Agricultural Institute and the numerous local agricultural papers; while at the agricultural competitions the highest rewards are given, not for extensive farming, but for high crops on small areas. Thus, at a recent competition in which hundreds of farmers took part, the first ten prizes were awarded to ten farmers who had grown, on three acres each, from 262 to 346¾ bushels of Indian corn, in other words _from 87 to 115 bushels to the acre_. This shows where the ambition of the Iowa farmer goes. In Minnesota, prizes were given already for crops of 300 to 1,120 bushels of potatoes to the acre--that is, from eight and a quarter to thirty-one tons to the acre--while the average potato crop in Great Britain is only six tons.

At the same time market-gardening is immensely extending in America. In the market-gardens of Florida we see such crops as 445 to 600 bushels of onions per acre, 400 bushels of tomatoes, 700 bushels of sweet potatoes, which testify to a high development of culture. As to the “truck farms” (market-gardening for export by steamer and rail), they covered, in 1892, 400,000 acres, and the fruit farms in the suburbs of Norfolk, in Virginia, were described by Prof. Ch. Baltet[70] as real _models_ of that sort of culture--a very high testimony in the mouth of a French gardener who himself comes from the model _marais_ of Troyes.

And while people in London continue to pay almost all the year round twopence for a lettuce (very often imported from Paris), they have at Chicago and Boston those unique establishments in the world where lettuces are grown in immense greenhouses with the aid of electric light; and we must not forget that although the discovery of “electric” growth is European (it is due to Siemens), it was at the Cornell University that it was proved by a series of experiments that electric light is an admirable aid for forwarding the growth of the _green_ parts of the plant.

In short, America, which formerly took the lead in bringing “extensive” agriculture to perfection, now takes the lead in “intensive,” or forced, agriculture as well. In this adaptability lies the real force of American competition.

FOOTNOTES:

[34] I leave these lines on purpose as they were written for the first edition of this book.

[35] Twenty-three per cent. of the total area of England, 40 per cent. in Wales, and 75 per cent. in Scotland are now under wood, coppice, mountain heath, water, etc. The remainder--that is, 32,777,513 acres--which were under culture and permanent pasture in the year 1890 (only 32,094,658 in 1911), may be taken as the “cultivable” area of Great Britain.

[36] Average area under wheat in 1853-1860, 4,092,160 acres; average crop, 14,310,779 quarters. Average area under wheat in 1884-1887, 2,509,055 acres; average crop (good years), 9,198,956 quarters. See Professor W. Fream’s _Rothamstead Experiments_ (London, 1888), page 83. I take in the above Sir John Lawes’ figure of 5·65 bushels per head of population every year. It is very close to the yearly allowance of 5·67 bushels of the French statisticians. The Russian statisticians reckon 5·67 bushels of winter crops (chiefly rye) and 2·5 bushels of spring crops (sarrazin, barley, etc.).

[37] There was an increase of 1,800,000 head of horned cattle, and a decrease of 4¼ million sheep (6⅔ millions, if we compare the year 1886 with 1868), which would correspond to an increase of 1¼ million of units of cattle, because eight sheep are reckoned as equivalent to one head of horned cattle. But five million acres having been reclaimed upon waste land since 1860, the above increase should hardly do for covering that area, so that the 2¼ million acres which were cultivated no longer remained fully uncovered. They were a pure loss to the nation.

[38] According to a report read by Mr. Crawford before the Statistical Society in October, 1899, Britain imports every year 4,500,000 tons of hay and other food for its cattle and horses. Under the present system of culture, 6,000,000 acres could produce these food-stuffs. If another 6,000,000 acres were sown with cereals, all the wheat required for the United Kingdom could have been produced at home with the methods of culture now in use.

[39] No less than 5,877,000 cwts. of beef and mutton, 1,065,470 sheep and lambs, and 415,565 pieces of cattle were imported in 1895. In 1910 the first of these figures rose to 13,690,000 cwts. Altogether, it is calculated (_Statesman’s Year-book_, 1912) that, in 1910, 21 lb. of imported beef, 13½ lb. of imported mutton, and 7 lb. of other sorts of meat, per head of population, were retained for home consumption; in addition to 11 lb. of butter, 262 lb. of wheat, 25 lb. of flour, and 20 lb. of rice and rice-flour, imported.

[40] Agricultural population (farmers and labourers) in England and Wales: 2,100,000 in 1861; 1,383,000 in 1884; 1,311,720 in 1891; 1,152,500 (including fishing population) in 1901.

[41] Round the small hamlet where I stayed for two summers, there were: One farm, 370 acres, four labourers and two boys; another, about 300 acres, two men and two boys; a third, 800 acres, five men only and probably as many boys. In truth, the problem of cultivating the land with the least number of men has been solved in this spot by not cultivating at all as much as two-thirds of it. Since these lines were written, in 1890, a movement in favour of intensive market-gardening has begun in this country, and I read in November, 1909, that they were selling at the Covent Garden market asparagus that had been grown in South Devon in November. They begin also to grow early potatoes in Cornwall and Devon. Formerly, nobody thought of utilising this rich soil and warm climate for growing early vegetables.

[42] _Land Problems and National Welfare_, London, 1911.

[43] _Rural England_, two big volumes, London, 1902.

[44] See H. Rider Haggard’s _Rural Denmark and its Lessons_, London, 1911, pp. 188-212.

[45] The _Rothamstead Experiments_, 1888, by Professor W. Fream, p. 35 _seq._ It is well worth noting that Mr. Hall, who was the head of Rothamstead for many years, maintained from his own experience that growing wheat in England is more profitable than rearing live stock. The same opinion was often expressed by the experts whose testimonies are reproduced by Rider Haggard. In many places of his _Rural England_ one finds also a mention of high wheat crops, up to fifty-six bushels per acre, obtained in many places in this country.

[46] The figures which I take for these calculations are given in _Agricultural Returns of the Board of Agriculture and Agricultural Statistics for 1911_, vol xlvi., pt. 1. They are as follows for the year 1910:--

Acres.
Total area (Great Britain) 56,803,000
Uncultivable area 24,657,070
(23,680,000 in 1895)
Cultivable area 32,145,930
Out of it, under the plough 14,668,890
Out of it, under permanent pasture 17,477,040

(During the last ten years, since the census of 1901, the cultivable area decreased by 323,000 acres, while the urban area increased by 166,710 acres, thus reaching now 4,015,700 acres. Since 1901, 942,000 acres were withdrawn from the plough, 661,000 acres in England, 158,000 in Wales, and 123,000 in Scotland.)

The distribution of the area which is actually under the plough between the various crops varies considerably from year to year. Taking 1910 (an average year) we have the following:--

Acres.
Corn crops 7,045,530
Clover and mature grasses 4,157,040
Green crops and orchards 2,994,890
Hops 32,890
Small fruit 84,310
Flax 230
Bare fallow, etc. 354,000
Total under culture (including that
part of permanent pasture which
gives hay) 14,668,890
(In 1901 15,610,890)
(In 1895 16,166,950)

Out of the 7,045,530 acres given to corn crops, 1,808,850 acres were under wheat (nearly 200,000 acres less than in 1899 and 100,000 acres less than in 1911), 1,728,680 acres under barley (only 1,597,930 in 1911), 3,020,970 acres under oats, about 300,000 under beans, and about 52,000 acres under rye and buckwheat. From 540,000 to 570,000 acres were given to potatoes. The area under clover and sown grasses is steadily declining since 1898, when it was 4,911,000 acres.

[47] Only from each 52 acres, out of 308 acres, hay is obtained. The remainder are grazing grounds.

[48] That is, thirty to thirty-three bushels on the average; forty bushels in good farms, and fifty in the best. The area under wheat was 16,700,000 acres in 1910, all chief corn crops covering 33,947,000 acres; the cultivated area is 90,300,000 acres, and the aggregate superficies of France, 130,800,000 acres. About agriculture in France, see Lecouteux, _Le blé, sa culture extensive et intensive_, 1883; Risler, _Physiologie et culture du blé_, 1886; Boitet, _Herbages et prairies naturelles_, 1885; Baudrillart, _Les populations agricoles de la Normandie_, 1880; Grandeau, _La production agricole en France_, and _L’agriculture et les institutions agricoles du monde au commencement du vingtième siècle_; P. Compain, _Prairies et paturages_; A. Clément, _Agriculture moderne_, 1906; Augé Laribé, _L’évolution de la France agricole_, 1912; Léonce de Lavergne’s last edition; and so on.

[49] The exports from France in 1910 (average year) attained: Wine, 222,804,000 fr.; spirits, 54,000,000 fr.; cheese, butter and sugar, 114,000,000 fr. To this country France sent, same year, £2,163,200 worth of wine, £1,013,200 worth of refined sugar, £2,116,000 worth of butter, and £400,000 worth of eggs, all of French origin only, in addition to £12,206,700 worth of manufactured silks, woollens, and cottons. The exports from Algeria are not taken in the above figures.

[50] Each 1,000 acres of French territory are disposed of as follows: 379 acres are under woods and coppices (176), buildings, communal grazing grounds, mountains, etc., and 621 acres are considered as “cultivable.” Out of the latter, 130 are under meadows, now irrigated to a great extent, 257 acres under cereals (124 under wheat, and 26 under wheat mixed with rye), 33 under vineyards, 83 under orchards, green crops, and various industrial cultures, and the remainder is chiefly under permanent pasture or bare fallow. As to cattle, we find in Great Britain, in 1910, which was an average year, 7,037,330 head of cattle (including in that number about 1,400,000 calves under one year), which makes _twenty-two head_ per each 100 acres of the cultivable area, and 27,103,000 sheep--that is, _eighty-four sheep_ per each 100 acres of the same area. In France we find, in the same year, 14,297,570 cattle (_nineteen_ head per each 100 acres of cultivable area), and only 17,357,640 sheep (_twenty-one_ sheep per 100 acres of the same). In other words, the proportion of horned cattle is nearly the same in both countries (twenty-two head and nineteen head per 100 acres), a considerable difference appearing in favour of this country only as to the number of sheep (eighty-four as against twenty-one). The heavy imports of hay, oil-cake, oats, etc., into this country must, however, not be forgotten, because, for each head of cattle which lives on imported food, eight sheep can be grazed, or be fed with home-grown fodder. As to horses, both countries stand on nearly the same footing.

[51] Out of each 1000 acres of territory, 673 are cultivated, and 327 are left as uncultivable, and part of them are now used for afforestation. Out of the 673 cultivated acres, 273 are given to cereals, out of which 61 are under pure wheat, 114 under _méteil_ (a mixture of ⅔ of wheat and ⅓ of rye) and pure rye, and 98 under other cereals; 18 to potatoes, 45 to roots and fodder, and 281 to various industrial cultures (beet for sugar, oleaginous grains, etc.); 27 are under gardens, kitchen gardens and parks, 177 under woods, and 57 are cultivated periodically. On the other hand, each 65 acres out of 1000 give catch-crops of carrots, mangolds, etc.

[52] _Annuaire Statistique de la Belgique pour_ 1910, Bruxelles, 1911. In Mr. Seebohm Rowntree’s admirable work, _Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium_, published 1910 (London, Macmillan), the reader will find all concerning Belgian agriculture dealt with in detail on the basis of the author’s personal scrupulous inquiries on the spot, and all available statistical information.

[53] _Land and Labour: Lessons from Belgium_, pp. 178, 179.

[54] Taking all horses, cattle and sheep in both countries, and reckoning eight sheep as equivalent to one head of horned cattle, we find that Belgium has _twenty-four_ cattle units and horses upon each 100 acres of territory, as against _twenty_ same units and horses in Great Britain. If we take cattle alone, the disproportion is much greater, as we find _thirty-six_ cattle units on each 100 acres of cultivable area, as against _nineteen_ in Great Britain. The annual value of animal produce in Belgium is estimated by the _Annuaire Statistique de la Belgique_ (1910, p. 302) at £66,040,000, including milk (£4,000,000), poultry (£1,600,000), and eggs (£1,400,000).

[55] I take these lines from a letter which the Rural Office of the Belgian Ministry of Agriculture had been kind enough to write to me on January 28, 1910, in reply to some questions which I had addressed to that Office in order to explain the striking oscillations of the Belgian exports between the years 1870 and 1880. A Belgian friend, having kindly taken new information upon this point, had the same opinion confirmed from another official source.

[56] If we take the figures of imports and exports, which I also owe to the Belgian Rural Office, we find that the _net_ imports of wheat, rye, and wheat mixed with rye (_méteil_) reached 3,011 million lb. in 1907 (3,374 million in 1910), which would give 429 lb. _per capita_ for a population of 7,000,000 inhabitants. But if this amount be added to the local production of the same cereals, which reached the same year 2,426 million lb., we arrive at the figure of 776 lb. per head of population. But such a figure is much too high, because the annual _per capita_ consumption _of both the winter and the spring cereals_ is generally estimated to be 502 lb. There must be, therefore, either an error in the weight of the imports, which is improbable, or the figures of re-exported cereals are not complete. Let me add that in France the average annual consumption _per capita_ of _all_ cereals, including oats, has been in the course of twenty-nine years (1880-1908) 525 lb., which confirms the above-mentioned figure. And in France people eat as much bread as in Belgium.

[57] See Appendix K.

[58] Assuming that 9,000 lb. of dry hay are necessary for keeping one head of horned cattle every year, the following figures (taken from Toubeau’s _Répartition métrique des impôts_) will show what we obtain now under usual and under intensive culture:--

+-----------------------+--------------+-------------+----------+
| | | |Number of |
| |Crop per acre.|Equivalent in|cattle fed|
| | Eng. lb. | dry hay. |from each |
| | | Eng. lb. |100 acres.|
+-----------------------+--------------+-------------+----------+
| Pasture | -- | 1,200 | 13 |
| Unirrigated meadows | -- | 2,400 | 26 |
| Clover, cut twice | -- | 4,800 | 52 |
| Swedish turnips | 38,500 | 10,000 | 108 |
| Rye-grass | 64,000 | 18,000 | 180 |
| Beet, high farming | 64,000 | 21,000 | 210 |
| Indian corn, ensilage | 120,000 | 30,000 | 330 |
+-----------------------+--------------+-------------+----------+

[59] I saw thermosiphons used by the market-gardeners at Worthing. They said that they found them quite satisfactory. As to the cost of heating the soil, let me mention the experiments of H. Mehner, described in _Gartenflora_, fascicules 16 and 17 of the year 1906. He considers the cost quite small, in comparison with the increased value of the crops. With £100 per _Morgen_, spent for the installation, and £10 every spring for heating, the author estimates the increase in the value of crops (earlier vegetables) at £100 every year. (Report to the German _Landwirthschafts Gesellschaft_, 1906.)

[60] “Portable soil” is not the latest departure in agriculture. The last one is the watering of the soil with special liquids containing special microbes. It is a fact that chemical manures, without organic manure, seldom prove to be sufficient. On the other hand, it was discovered lately that certain microbes in the soil are a necessary condition for the growth of plants. Hence the idea of _sowing_ the beneficent microbes, which rapidly develop in the soil and fertilise it. We certainly shall soon hear more of this new method, which is experimented upon on a large scale in Germany, in order to transform peat-bogs and heavy soils into rich meadows and fields.

[61] Ponce, _La culture maraîchère_, 1869; Gressent, _Le potager moderne_, 7th edition in 1886; Courtois-Gérard, _Manuel pratique de culture maraîchère_, 1863; L. G. Gillekens, _Cours pratique de culture maraîchère_, Bruxelles, 1895; Vilmorin, _Le bon jardinier_ (almanac). The general reader who cares to know about the productivity of the soil will find plenty of examples, well classified, in the most interesting work _La Répartition métrique des impôts_, by A. Toubeau, 2 vols., 1880. I do not quote many excellent English manuals, but I must remark that the market-gardening culture in this country has also obtained results very highly prized by the Continental gardeners, and that the chief reproach to be addressed to it is its relatively small extension. French market-gardening having been lately introduced into England, several manuals have been published for that purpose. The little work, _French Gardening_, by Thomas Smith, London (Utopia Press), 1909, deserves special mention, as it contains the results of one year’s observation of the work of a French gardener, specially invited to England by Mr. Joseph Fels, and gives (with illustrations) a mass of practical indications and numerical data as to the cost and the value of the produce. A subsequent work of the same author, _The Profitable Culture of Vegetables for Market Gardeners, Small Holders, and Others_, London (Longmans, Green), 1911, deals in detail with the ordinary culture of vegetables and the intensive culture of the French gardeners.

[62] _Manuel pratique de culture maraîchère_, by Courtois-Gérard, 4th edit., 1868.

[63] Already it is partly removed in France and Belgium, owing to the public laboratories where analyses of seeds and manure are made free. The falsifications discovered by these laboratories exceed all that could have been imagined. Manures, containing only one-fifth part of the nutritious elements they were supposed to contain, were found to be quite common; while manures containing injurious matters, and no nutritious parts whatever, were not unfrequently supplied by firms of “respectable” repute. With seeds, things stand even worse. Samples of grass seeds which contained 20 per cent. of injurious grasses, or 20 per cent. of grains of sand, so coloured as to deceive the buyer, or even 10 per cent. of a deadly poisonous grass, passed through the Ghent laboratory.

[64] During the winter of 1890 a friend of mine, who lived in a London suburb, used to get his butter from Bavaria _per parcel post_. It cost him 10s. the eleven pounds in Bavaria, parcel post inclusive (2s. 2d.), 6d. for the money order, and 2½d. the letter; total, less than 11s. Butter of an inferior quality (out of comparison), with 10 to 15 per cent. of water inclusive, was sold in London at 1s. 6d. the lb. at the same time.