The Press Saturday, October 22, 1927. "Where Wealth Accumulates."

Press, Volume LXIII, Issue 19138, 22 October 1927, Page 14

The Press Saturday, October 22, 1927. "Where Wealth Accumulates."

It is one of the most hackneyed of quotations, and in its general application it is not true. The men of England have not decayed. In its limited application to agriculture, however, it still has force, and again and again news from the Shires recalls the lines. Within the last few days there has been an ironic juxtaposition of news from England. "While the motor show at Olympia is the largest on record, and British makers of cars are hopefully straining every nerve to extend their markets, the Shires report the worst harvest for fifty years, and a member of the Conservative Party declares that numbers of farmers, in-

cluding men whose names are household words, are leaving their farms, He may be exaggerating, but there is no doubt that the harvest has been bad, and the results must be serious. The unsatisfactory condition of English fanning has been a stock subject of discussion for years, and lately it has been particularly prominent in newspapers and magazines. Sir William Beach Thomas, one of the foremost authorities in England, said this summer that the harvest would be critical. Many fanners were finding the greatest difiiculty in paying their way, and a good harvest might save them. Well, it has not been a good harvest!

We see in this contrast between the plight of English farming and the prosperity of the motor trade a vivid illustration, of the difference between the lot of the manufacturer and that of the man on the land. Leaving out of account the special difficulties of the English farmer, we are struck by the huge elemental fact of the weather. To the motor-car maker the weather does not matter. He can plan ahead regardless of it, and he knows with a reasonable amount of certainty how many cars he can sell. The farmer, and especially the farmer who crops, cannot have such certainty. The | weather is over him, a capricious tyrant, and a crop that looks first-rate in June may be ruined in August. It is this huge, factor that sets farming apart, in all lands, from all other industries, and will always help to bring to grief theories of townsmen about the land. The farmer has to pit himself against Nature; the manufacturer works under shelter. It is significant that the branch of English farming that appears to be most. successful is j the. one in which the weather counts for least—that is, stock-breeding. The Royal Agricultural Show in England, j says Sir William Beach Thomas, is "by common confession all round tho "world ... altogether beyond com"parison." Farmers must come to Britain if they want to see the best stock, yet in Britain " agriculture has "been sacrificed as nowhere else in "the wide world." In farming, he says, the English do' everything but practise the -art. "As a nation we " do not make, however lucky we may " be, more than a few thousand pounds " by selling pure-bred stock to 'farmers "overseas. We buy from them some " five hundred million "pounds' worth "of farm produce."

The failure of the harvest of 1927 will force the problem of agriculture still further to the front in politics. For. some time a strong section of the Conservative Party has been dissatisfied with the Party's inaction in this direction, and now more pressure will be brought to bear on Mr Baldwin, who, so far, has done nothing more than promise a system of long-term credits. Compelled 'to take lower prices and pay higher wages, and forced to meet the competition of the whole world, involved in an antiquated .land system, and still unconvinced of the value of co-operation, the English fanner is a man to be pitied. His only consolation is that the farmer in many other countries is in a similar plight. No man who really loves and understands England, no Briton who realises what she means to the Empire and the world, can watch unconcerned the struggle of the English farmer against these odds, and the gradual depopulation of the countryside. TheBaldwin Government has many probI lems to grapple with, and this is by no mea-ns the least important or the easiest.