A COMPARISON.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVI, Issue 187, 12 August 1904, Page 2

A COMPARISON.

A New Zealander, who is revisiting the Old Country after twenty-lour years ol funning experience at the Antipodes, hus just completed an extensive luiir of the southern English counties, and his comments on English farming methods, as outlined in a letter to the* London Standard, make interesting reading. The intellectual ail*vthy of the avcrefee .English farm labourer did not fall to strike tho visitor, and the. explonation he oilers seems the natural one. "/This want of interest," he says, "is simply the apathy engendered of starvation both of mind and body, and can only lie remedied by giving them a fair share of what their laliour produces. Ah soop as they get better pay they will get better food ; better food will bring, better, brains, and better brains will take care that education Is supplied." Tho antiquity of tools and methods still largely in vogue has- often jljeem noted. Tho New Zealander Illustrates tho defect by a contrast from his own

observation and experience. "Fancy a farmer," he says, ''using three horses, one man, and one boy to turn one farrow about nine by five. In New Zealand one man, one dou-ble-furrow, plough and three horses (abreast) would do two furrows at once." The visitor, ia also struck by the (act that the farmer and his family do not themselves work as they do in New Zealand. They ought, ho drily observes, to be country gentleman in i«ceipt of an income of £IO,OOO per annum. The advantages of co-operation are urged slri>r»gl|y. A lirsl-ctyuss co-o-pcijUt-ive dairy, worked'an the lines of lite S'ew Zealand concerns, would probably pay, in tl*o opinion of tins critic, 10 to 12 per cent, on the outlay. "A good factory, with sreamcries, could be erected at a « o st of £3OOO, properly equipped and furnished ; tlKre could follow afterwards the bacon factory, which is a sine qua non, and the general storekeeper's business." The complicated systems of land tenure and tlie stolid conservatism or the English farmer were boldly attacked by the New Zc a lander, who observed that there is am ulter want of cooperation on the part of .the English (arming community. An effort is to be madkj this year to arouse the spirit of combination amongst the farmers of England; but with what success remains to be seen. Certain it is that until they learn to sink local jealousies and prejudices and t 0 bind themselves together in the interests of the industry as a whole, farming in Great Britain will continue to labour under tlie disadvantages the New Zealander has noted,