![only eight and a half bushels; and they keep almost twice as many
cattle upon each cultivable acre as is kept in Great Britain.[54]
Moreover, they even export cattle and horses. Up to 1890 Belgium
exported from 36,000 to 94,000 head of cattle, from 42,000 to
70,000 sheep, and from 60,000 to 108,600 swine. In 1890 these
exports suddenly came to an end—probably in consequence of a
prohibition of such imports into Germany. Only horses continue to be
exported to the amount of about 25,000 horses and foals every year.
Large portions of the land are given besides to the culture of
industrial plants, potatoes for spirit, beet for sugar, and so on.
However, it must not be believed that the soil of Belgium is more
fertile than the soil of this country. On the contrary, to use the words
of Laveleye, “only one half, or less, of the territory offers natural
conditions which are favourable for agriculture”; the other half
consists of a gravelly soil, or sands, “the natural sterility of which
could be overpowered only by heavy manuring.” Man, not nature,
has given to the Belgium soil its present productivity. With this soil
and labour, Belgium succeeds in supplying nearly all the food of a
population which is denser than that of England and Wales, and
numbers 589 inhabitants to the square mile.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4123-250301024625-937cf88f/85/Leading-and-Managing-in-Nursing-Yoder-Wise-5th-Edition-Test-Bank-15-320.jpg)
![Fig. 3.—Proportion of cultivated and uncultivated areas in Great
Britain, Belgium, and France. a, Wheat; b, wheat and rye
mixed; c, other cereals; d′, green crops; d, permanent
pasture; e, uncultivated.
Since 1880, when the duties on imported cereals were abolished
(they were before that sixpence for each 220 lb.), and corn could be
imported free, “the importers were no more obliged to make special
declarations for merchandise which had to be re-exported; they
declared their imports as if they were destined to be used within the
country.”[55] The result was, that while in the year 1870 the imports
of cereals were 154 lb. per head of population, the same imports
rose to 286 lb. in 1880. But no one can say how much of these 286
lb. is consumed in Belgium itself; and if we deduct from the total of
the imports the quantities re-exported the same year, we obtain
figures which cannot be relied upon.[56] It is therefore safer to](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4123-250301024625-937cf88f/85/Leading-and-Managing-in-Nursing-Yoder-Wise-5th-Edition-Test-Bank-17-320.jpg)
![quantities of products of the soil. Thus, in the year 1910 she
exported 254,730 tons of vegetables (as against 187,000 imported),
40,000 tons of fruit, 34,000 tons of plants and flowers (the whole
nearly £3,000,000 worth), 256,000 of oleaginous grains, 18,500 tons
of wool, nearly 60,000 tons of flax, and so on. I do not mention the
exports of butter, rabbits, skins, an immense quantity of sugar
(about 180,000 tons), the vegetable oils and the spirits, because
considerable quantities of beet and potatoes are imported. In short,
we have here an export of agricultural produce grown in the country
itself attaining the figure of 48s. per head of population.
All taken, there is thus no possibility of contesting the fact, that if
the soil of Great Britain were cultivated only as the unfertile soil of
Belgium is cultivated—notwithstanding all the social obstacles which
stand in the way of an intensive culture, in Belgium as elsewhere—a
much greater part of the population of these islands would obtain its
food from the soil of its own land than is the case nowadays.[57]
On the other side it must not be forgotten that Belgium is a
manufacturing country which exports, moreover, manufactured
home-made goods to the value of 198s. per head of population, and
150s. worth of crude or half-manufactured produce, while the total
exports from the United Kingdom have only lately attained during
the extraordinary year of 1911 the value of 201s. per inhabitant. As
to separate parts of the Belgian territory, the small and naturally
unfertile province of West Flanders not only grew in 1890 the food of
its 580 inhabitants on the square mile, but exported agricultural
produce to the value of 25s. per head of its population. And yet no
one can read Laveleye’s masterly work without coming to the
conclusion that Flemish agriculture would have realised still better
results, were it not hampered in its growth by the steady and heavy
increase of rent. In the face of the rent being increased each nine
years, many farmers have lately abstained from further
improvements.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4123-250301024625-937cf88f/85/Leading-and-Managing-in-Nursing-Yoder-Wise-5th-Edition-Test-Bank-19-320.jpg)
![intensive horticultural treatment. This is where agriculture is going
now.
We know that the dearest of all varieties of our staple food is
meat; and those who are not vegetarians, either by persuasion or by
necessity, consume on the average 225 lb. of meat—that is, roughly
speaking, a little less than the third part of an ox—every year. And
we have seen that, even in this country, and Belgium, two to three
acres are wanted for keeping one head of horned cattle; so that a
community of, say, 1,000,000 inhabitants would have to reserve
somewhere about 1,000,000 acres of land for supplying it with meat.
But if we go to the farm of M. Goppart—one of the promoters of
ensilage in France—we shall see him growing, on a drained and well-
manured field, no less than an average of 120,000 lb. of corn-grass
to the acre, which gives 30,000 lb. of dry hay—that is, the food of
one horned beast per acre. The produce is thus trebled.
As to beetroot, which is used also for feeding cattle, Mr.
Champion, at Whitby, succeeded, with the help of sewage, in
growing 100,000 lb. of beet on each acre, and occasionally 150,000
and 200,000 lb. He thus grew on each acre the food of, at least, two
or three head of cattle. And such crops are not isolated facts; thus,
M. Gros, at Autun, succeeds in cropping 600,000 lb. of beet and
carrots, which crop would permit him to keep four horned cattle on
each acre. In fact, crops of 100,000 lb. of beet occur in numbers in
the French competitions, and the success depends entirely upon
good culture and appropriate manuring. It thus appears that while
under ordinary high farming we need 2,000,000 acres, or more, to
keep 1,000,000 horned cattle, double that amount could be kept on
one-half of that area; and if the density of population required it, the
amount of cattle could be doubled again, and the area required to
keep it might still be one-half, or even one-third of what it is now.
[58]
French Gardening.—The above examples are striking enough, and
yet those afforded by the market-gardening culture are still more
striking. I mean the culture carried on in the neighbourhood of big](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4123-250301024625-937cf88f/85/Leading-and-Managing-in-Nursing-Yoder-Wise-5th-Edition-Test-Bank-23-320.jpg)
![the cool frames. This new improvement becomes of general use, and
we have the authority of Barral’s Dictionnaire d’Agriculture to affirm
that it gives excellent results. Under this system stable manure is
used mainly for producing loam.[59]
As to the different degrees of fertility of the soil—always the
stumbling-block of those who write about agriculture—the fact is
that in market-gardening the soil is always made, whatever it
originally may have been. Consequently—we are told by Prof.
Dybowski, in the article “Maraîchers” in Barral’s Dictionnaire
d’Agriculture—it is now a usual stipulation of the renting contracts of
the Paris maraîchers that the gardener may carry away his soil,
down to a certain depth, when he quits his tenancy. He himself
makes it, and when he moves to another plot he carts his soil away,
together with his frames, his water-pipes, and his other belongings.
[60]
I could not relate here all the marvels achieved in market-
gardening; so that I must refer the reader to works—most
interesting works—especially devoted to the subject, and give only a
few illustrations.[61] Let us take, for instance, the orchard—the
marais—of M. Ponce, the author of a well-known work on the culture
maraîchère. His orchard covered only two and seven-tenths acres.
The outlay for the establishment, including a steam engine for
watering purposes, reached £1,136. Eight persons, M. Ponce
included, cultivated the orchard and carried the vegetables to the
market, for which purpose one horse was kept; when returning from
Paris they brought in manure, for which £100 was spent every year.
Another £100 was spent in rent and taxes. But how to enumerate all
that was gathered every year on this plot of less than three acres,
without filling two pages or more with the most wonderful figures?
One must read them in M. Ponce’s work, but here are the chief
items: More than 20,000 lb. of carrots; more than 20,000 lb. of
onions, radishes and other vegetables sold by weight; 6,000 heads
of cabbage; 3,000 of cauliflower; 5,000 baskets of tomatoes; 5,000
dozen of choice fruit; and 154,000 heads of salad; in short, a total of](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4123-250301024625-937cf88f/85/Leading-and-Managing-in-Nursing-Yoder-Wise-5th-Edition-Test-Bank-25-320.jpg)
![250,000 lb. of vegetables. The soil was made to such an amount out
of forcing beds that every year 250 cubic yards of loam had to be
sold. Similar examples could be given by the dozen, and the best
evidence against any possible exaggeration of the results is the very
high rent paid by the gardeners, which reaches in the suburbs of
London from £10 to £15 per acre, and in the suburbs of Paris attains
as much as £32 per acre. No less than 2,125 acres are cultivated
round Paris in that way by 5,000 persons, and thus not only the
2,000,000 Parisians are supplied with vegetables, but the surplus is
also sent to London.
The above results are obtained with the help of warm frames,
thousands of glass bells, and so on. But even without such costly
things, with only thirty-six yards of frames for seedlings, vegetables
are grown in the open air to the value of £200 per acre.[62] It is
obvious, however, that in such cases the high selling prices of the
crops are not due to the high prices fetched by early vegetables in
winter; they are entirely due to the high crops of the plainest ones.
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](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4123-250301024625-937cf88f/85/Leading-and-Managing-in-Nursing-Yoder-Wise-5th-Edition-Test-Bank-26-320.jpg)
![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](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4123-250301024625-937cf88f/85/Leading-and-Managing-in-Nursing-Yoder-Wise-5th-Edition-Test-Bank-28-320.jpg)
![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](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4123-250301024625-937cf88f/85/Leading-and-Managing-in-Nursing-Yoder-Wise-5th-Edition-Test-Bank-32-320.jpg)
![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](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4123-250301024625-937cf88f/85/Leading-and-Managing-in-Nursing-Yoder-Wise-5th-Edition-Test-Bank-33-320.jpg)
![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](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4123-250301024625-937cf88f/85/Leading-and-Managing-in-Nursing-Yoder-Wise-5th-Edition-Test-Bank-37-320.jpg)
![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](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4123-250301024625-937cf88f/85/Leading-and-Managing-in-Nursing-Yoder-Wise-5th-Edition-Test-Bank-40-320.jpg)
![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.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4123-250301024625-937cf88f/85/Leading-and-Managing-in-Nursing-Yoder-Wise-5th-Edition-Test-Bank-41-320.jpg)
![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](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4123-250301024625-937cf88f/85/Leading-and-Managing-in-Nursing-Yoder-Wise-5th-Edition-Test-Bank-42-320.jpg)
![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.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4123-250301024625-937cf88f/85/Leading-and-Managing-in-Nursing-Yoder-Wise-5th-Edition-Test-Bank-43-320.jpg)
![[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](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4123-250301024625-937cf88f/85/Leading-and-Managing-in-Nursing-Yoder-Wise-5th-Edition-Test-Bank-44-320.jpg)
![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.](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/4123-250301024625-937cf88f/85/Leading-and-Managing-in-Nursing-Yoder-Wise-5th-Edition-Test-Bank-45-320.jpg)
Leading and Managing in Nursing Yoder-Wise 5th Edition Test Bank
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- 5. Copyright © 2011 by Mosby, Inc., an affiliate of Elsevier Inc. a. Asking the community what the safety issues are. b. Consulting with a management expert about staffing schedules. c. Ensuring that the senior nursing officer attends the board meetings. d. Instituting improved practices to reduce needle-stick injuries. ANS: B
- 6. Copyright © 2011 by Mosby, Inc., an affiliate of Elsevier Inc. Test Bank 2-2 The IOM report (2004) highlighted the importance of the attendance of the senior nurse executive at board meetings to enhance understanding of issues and opportunities in the system that contribute to safe (or unsafe) nursing practice and patient care. REF: Page 28 TOP: AONE competency: Communication and Relationship-Building 4. During review of back injuries, it is determined that mechanical lifts and transfer belts are not being properly used. In addressing this concern, the unit manager: a. Meets individually with nurses who are observed to be using the lifts incorrectly to review the correct procedure. b. After consultation with the staff about the review, orders new lifts to replace older ones that are malfunctioning. c. Blames the system for inadequate funding for resources. d. Reviews the system of reporting incidents to ensure that appropriate reporting is occurring. ANS: B The IOM report (2004) points to the need to involve nurses in decisions that affect them and the provision of care. REF: Page 28 TOP: AONE competency: Communication and Relationship-Building 5. Before the IOM report was issued, “To err is human” adverse events were considered: a. A normal risk. b. Rare. c. A reflection of some organizations. d. Related to systems errors. ANS: B The IOM report (2004) highlighted deaths attributable to medical error as more common than was once thought. REF: Pages 26, 27 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of Healthcare Environment 6. In complying with Crossing the Quality Chasm, you ensure that: a. Patients are actively encouraged to make decisions related to care. b. Rules and decisions are made through centralized processes. c. You monitor the performance of each staff member closely. d. Preference is given to increasing staff numbers rather than staff credentials.
- 7. Copyright © 2011 by Mosby, Inc., an affiliate of Elsevier Inc. Test Bank 2-3 ANS: A Quality care is related to safer patient care, and autonomy in decision making is associated with the factors identified in the report. REF: Pages 26, 27 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of the Healthcare Environment 7. After consulting with practice environments about quality and safety concerns in health care, the Dean of Health Programs at US University develops: a. A nursing program that emphasizes the development of a strong disciplinary identity. b. Programming that stresses discipline-based research. c. Partnerships with health care to develop software for reporting of adverse events. d. An interdisciplinary program for nurses, pharmacists, and medical practitioners that emphasizes collaborative learning teams. ANS: D Health Professions Education identified that education related to health disciplines in silos leads to compromised communication and inability to function as an integrated whole for patient-centered care. REF: Pages 27, 28 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of Healthcare Environment 8. In designing a quality, safe healthcare environment, the primary emphasis needs to be on: a. Evidence-based practice. b. Informatics. c. Staffing. d. The patient. ANS: D Focusing on the patient moves care from concern about who controls care to a focus on what care is provided to and with patients, which was an aim identified in the IOM report, Crossing the Quality Chasm. REF: Pages 26, 27 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of the Healthcare Environment 9. As a patient care advocate, you regularly coach patients as to how to stay safe in health care by educating them about: a. The need to understand and record all medications being taken. b. Bringing their own linens and other personal items to the hospital. c. Washing hands frequently while in a healthcare environment and using a hand sanitizer.
- 8. Copyright © 2011 by Mosby, Inc., an affiliate of Elsevier Inc. Test Bank 2-4 d. Following closely the directions and orders of healthcare providers. ANS: A The five steps to safer health care for patients include keeping a list of medications that patients are taking. REF: Page 29 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of Healthcare Environment 10. As a nurse manager on the West Surgery Unit, you are interested in increasing patient safety on your unit. Your initial focus is on the two encounters that the Chasm series identified as most likely to generate concerns about patient safety. As a result, you initiate which of the following? a. Questions on the pre-admission history that specifically explore details of substance use b. Careful monitoring of all patients who are ambulating postoperatively c. Rigorous patient teaching related to deep breathing and coughing d. Systematic follow-up with patients to ensure that they understand details of surgery ANS: A The Chasm series identified two common occurrences that can compromise patient safety: (1) underlying mental health or substance-use conditions that complicate the basic intervention strategy and (2) medication errors. Awareness of substance use enables caregivers to anticipate potential complications and the need to modify interventions. Falls and respiratory complications arise out of the Nurse-Sensitive Care Standards; ensuring that patients have an understanding of what will happen when surgery is needed reflects the fifth step in Five Steps to Safe Health Care. REF: Pages 27, 28 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of Healthcare Environment 11. Which philosophical statement would be MOST consistent with that of a learning organization? a. We believe that sustainable funding is a key factor in service. b. Our staff members are valuable. c. We believe in people. d. We believe that change is essential to good service and quality patient care. ANS: D Learning organizations are committed to the probability of change, to the need to learn, and to maintaining competence to address change. REF: Page 28 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of the Healthcare Environment
- 9. Copyright © 2011 by Mosby, Inc., an affiliate of Elsevier Inc. Test Bank 2-5 12. To achieve nurse-sensitive care standards developed by the NQF, you advocate for which of the following in your health facility? a. Programming that builds individual nurse competency into smoking cessation b. Implementation of informatics at the bedside c. Staff-manager conferences to reviewed reporting of adverse events d. Patient councils to review food, recreation, and nurse-patient relations ANS: A The NQF outlines nursing-centered intervention measures related to smoking cessation, which may require training and education for nurses. REF: Pages 29, 30 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of the Healthcare Environment 13. You notice that Sally, a student on your unit, is giving information to an anxious young teen, who seems very uncertain about preparation for an upper GI series. After Sally leaves the room, you ask her how she thought her conversation went and: a. Encourage her to ask the patient if he has questions or concerns about the procedure. b. Advise her to consider providing the patient with more information. c. Suggest that she leave some brochures on the procedure with the patient. d. Suggest that she also provide teaching to the adolescent’s parents. ANS: A The Five Steps to Safe Health Care for Patients includes the step of asking questions if there are doubts or concerns. The nurse can encourage patients to take a larger role in care by taking these steps and by providing patients with coaching in the steps. REF: Page 29 TOP: AONE competency: Communication and Relationship-Building 14. The NQF provides a model for advancement of healthcare quality that could be used in healthcare organizations. Using this model might involve councils or committees that dialogue openly regarding quality and: a. Consist of administrative and patient representatives. b. Are interdisciplinary and intersectoral. c. Are composed of senior executives and managers. d. Are composed of patients and patients’ families. ANS: B The NQF included various sectors (government, professional, consumer, business) and disciplines in discussions about quality in health care. REF: Pages 29, 30 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of Healthcare
- 10. Copyright © 2011 by Mosby, Inc., an affiliate of Elsevier Inc. Test Bank 2-6 Environment 15. A survey of safety practices and attitudes at hospital XYZ finds that staff members have concerns about their safety and that of patients. Results from the manager subgroup are likely to be: a. Similar to staff evaluations of safety. b. More positive about safety than staff. c. Less positive about safety than staff. d. Less positive than senior executives about safety. ANS: B A study of long-term care facilities found that managers rated the safety culture more positively than staff. REF: Pages 31-33 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of the Healthcare Environment 16. As a result of the Joint Commission assessment, a healthcare facility loses it accreditation. What is the primary consequence for this institution? a. Loss of funding b. Organizational shift to profit status c. Practices continue as usual d. Staff morale and care standards remain high ANS: A The Joint Commission is a not-for-profit organization that has attained status from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid. Failure to meet Joint Commission standards is deemed failure to meet CMS sets, which has funding implications. REF: Pages 29-31 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of Healthcare Environment 17. How would you prepare your unit for a Joint Commission visit? a. Commit staff resources over a six-month period to updating procedure manuals. b. Educate staff through meetings and training sessions regarding appropriate answers to questions. c. Prepare a manual that outlines orientation procedures, and ensure that all safety issues are addressed. d. Ensure that review of patient outcomes and of responses to outcome data is ongoing. ANS: D The Joint Commission conducts reviews on an ongoing basis that are directed toward outcomes (such as number of patient falls) and not processes (such as procedure manuals).
- 11. Copyright © 2011 by Mosby, Inc., an affiliate of Elsevier Inc. Test Bank 2-7 REF: Pages 30, 31 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of the Healthcare Environment 18. On the basis of a review of increased falls with injury and increased restraint use during evening hours, as the unit manager, you most likely would: a. Review daytime and evening staffing mixes. b. Schedule continuing education for all staff members. c. Review the safety of ambulation devices. d. Continue your current practices and procedures. ANS: A As a nurse manager, it is your responsibility to challenge any act that is unsafe and to stop actions that are not performed in the patient’s best interest. This includes, according to the Nurse-Sensitive Care Standards, ensuring that staffing mixes are appropriate for care provided on each shift. REF: Pages 29-31, 34 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of Healthcare Environment 19. The STAR approach to patient safety encourages: a. Focus and reflection. b. Continuing education. c. Multidisciplinary approaches. d. Patient feedback. ANS: A The STAR approach to patient safety emphasizes the following: Stop to concentrate on the task, think about the task, act to accomplish the task (focus activities), and review how well the task has been accomplished (reflection). REF: Pages 31, 32 TOP: AONE competency: Professionalism 20. A logical response to the final step of the STAR Approach to Patient Safety might be to: a. Seek further learning. b. Finish the care that was started. c. Think about what needs to be done. d. Concentrate on the task at hand. ANS: A The final step of the STAR approach is to review how well the task was accomplished. If the task did not meet established standards or did not meet patient needs satisfactorily, a next step might be to refine knowledge and skills. REF: Pages 31, 32 TOP: AONE competency: Professionalism 21. The culture of blame and punishment of errors tends to encourage a culture of:
- 12. Copyright © 2011 by Mosby, Inc., an affiliate of Elsevier Inc. Test Bank 2-8 a. Perfectionism. b. Learning. c. Safety. d. Trust. ANS: A Keeping Patients Safe: Transforming the Work Environment of Nurses points to the practice that many organizations have of blaming, thus setting up a culture in which mistakes are attributed solely to individuals, perfectionism is stressed, and the emphasis does not include systems and solutions. REF: Page 28 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of Healthcare Environments 22. Mary, an 85-year-old patient with cognitive impairment and gross instability, wanders continuously. Lately, she has fallen twice, and the family demands that she be restrained. As the unit manager, you have initiated a least restraint practice. An appropriate action in this situation would be: a. Setting up a nursing team meeting to review practices. b. Calling the family to inform them of the practice. c. Initiating a multidisciplinary and family meeting to focus on Mary’s needs. d. Restraining Mary to satisfy the family’s wishes. ANS: C Crossing the Quality Chasm emphasizes what care is provided and not who controls decisions, as well as the importance of rendering care with the client rather than to the client. In this situation, the patient includes family in discussions about quality needs, to take a team approach that involves healthcare professionals, the family, Mary’s needs, and evidence associated with safe practice. REF: Pages 27, 28 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of the Healthcare Environment 23. A client requires an appendectomy. The surgeon explains the procedure and asks the client to sign the consent. The patient speaks very little English and looks worried. As a nurse, you would: a. Suggest that an interpreter explain the procedure to the client and answer any questions. b. Ask the client if he has any questions. c. Draw a picture to show the incision. d. Not intervene. ANS: A The Five Steps to Safer Patient Care identifies that encouraging patients to ask questions when there are doubts and concerns and ensuring understanding before surgery is performed are ways in which nurses can support patients in having
- 13. Copyright © 2011 by Mosby, Inc., an affiliate of Elsevier Inc. Test Bank 2-9 greater influence in their own care. In this situation, asking an interpreter to help enables access to information for the patient and active assessment of his understanding. REF: Page 29 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of Healthcare Environment 24. As the case manager in a home health service, you are interested in trying the Institute for Healthcare Improvement TCAB project in your service. In considering this application, you need to particularly consider: a. Reliability of data gathered by the project. b. Applicability of the project to your setting. c. Lack of patient-centeredness in the project. d. The focus of the project on resource issues. ANS: B The TCAB project addresses safety, reliability, patient-centeredness, and care team vitality in the accomplishment of patient goals. Currently, the project involves only inpatient medical-surgical units. REF: Page 31 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of Healthcare Environment MULTIPLE RESPONSE 1. Which of the following patients would be at greatest risk in a healthcare visit (select all that apply)? a. Clyde requires an anticoagulant. He tells the nurse about his medications. He does not include an herbal supplement. b. George is very shy and withdrawn. He asks the nurse to leave him alone. c. Sarah is a new parent who finds that nurses on the children’s unit are very helpful. She is eager to accept all suggestions, including those that she does not yet understand. d. Claude is booked for bowel surgery. His doctor explains about the colostomy. Later, Claude tells his wife that he really doesn’t know what the doctor meant by colostomy. ANS: A, C, D Safer health care involves the patient as an active consumer who keeps and brings a list of all medications, including natural remedies, and questions if there are doubts, concerns, or lack of understanding. REF: Page 29 TOP: AONE competency: Knowledge of Healthcare Environment
- 14. Other documents randomly have different content
- 15. only eight and a half bushels; and they keep almost twice as many cattle upon each cultivable acre as is kept in Great Britain.[54] Moreover, they even export cattle and horses. Up to 1890 Belgium exported from 36,000 to 94,000 head of cattle, from 42,000 to 70,000 sheep, and from 60,000 to 108,600 swine. In 1890 these exports suddenly came to an end—probably in consequence of a prohibition of such imports into Germany. Only horses continue to be exported to the amount of about 25,000 horses and foals every year. Large portions of the land are given besides to the culture of industrial plants, potatoes for spirit, beet for sugar, and so on. However, it must not be believed that the soil of Belgium is more fertile than the soil of this country. On the contrary, to use the words of Laveleye, “only one half, or less, of the territory offers natural conditions which are favourable for agriculture”; the other half consists of a gravelly soil, or sands, “the natural sterility of which could be overpowered only by heavy manuring.” Man, not nature, has given to the Belgium soil its present productivity. With this soil and labour, Belgium succeeds in supplying nearly all the food of a population which is denser than that of England and Wales, and numbers 589 inhabitants to the square mile.
- 16. Fig. 2.—Proportion of the cultivated area which is given to cereals altogether, and to wheat, in Belgium. The square which encloses the wheat square represents the area given to both wheat and a mixture of wheat with rye. If the exports and imports of agricultural produce from and into Belgium be taken into account, we can ask ourselves whether Laveleye’s conclusions are not still good, and whether only one inhabitant out of each ten to twenty requires imported food. In the years 1880-1885 the soil of Belgium supplied with home-grown food no less than 490 inhabitants per square mile, and there remained something for export—no less than £1,000,000 worth of agricultural produce being exported every year to Great Britain. But it is not possible to say with certitude whether the conditions are the same at the present time.
- 17. Fig. 3.—Proportion of cultivated and uncultivated areas in Great Britain, Belgium, and France. a, Wheat; b, wheat and rye mixed; c, other cereals; d′, green crops; d, permanent pasture; e, uncultivated. Since 1880, when the duties on imported cereals were abolished (they were before that sixpence for each 220 lb.), and corn could be imported free, “the importers were no more obliged to make special declarations for merchandise which had to be re-exported; they declared their imports as if they were destined to be used within the country.”[55] The result was, that while in the year 1870 the imports of cereals were 154 lb. per head of population, the same imports rose to 286 lb. in 1880. But no one can say how much of these 286 lb. is consumed in Belgium itself; and if we deduct from the total of the imports the quantities re-exported the same year, we obtain figures which cannot be relied upon.[56] It is therefore safer to
- 18. consider the figures of the annual production of cereals in Belgium, such as they are given in the official Annuaire. Now, if we take the figures given in the Annuaire Statistique de la Belgique for the year 1911, we come to the following results. The annual agricultural census, which is being made since 1901, gives for the year 1909 that 2,290,300,000 lb. of wheat, rye, and wheat mixed with rye were obtained on all the farms of Belgium larger than two and a half acres (2,002,000,000 lb. in 1895). Besides, 219,200,000 lb. of barley, 1,393,000,000 lb. of oats, and a considerable quantity of oleaginous grains have been produced. It is generally accepted that the average consumption of both winter and spring cereals attains 502 lb. per head of population; and as the population of Belgium was 7,000,000 on January 1, 1907, it appears that no less than 3,524,400,000 lb. of cereals would have been required to supply the annual food of the population. If we compare this figure with that of the annual production just mentioned, we see then that, notwithstanding the considerable decrease of the area given to wheat since the abolition of the entrance duties, Belgium still produces at least two-thirds of the cereal food required for its very dense population, which is nearly 600 persons per square mile (596 in 1907). It must be noticed that we should have come to a still higher figure if we took into account the other cereals (to say nothing of the leguminous plants and vegetables grown and consumed in Belgium), and still more so if we took into account what is grown upon the small holdings less than two and a half acres each. The number of such small holdings was 554,041 in 1895, and the number of people living upon them reached nearly 2,000,000. They are not included in the official statistics, and yet upon most of them some cereals are grown, in addition to vegetables and fodder for cattle. If Belgium produces in cereals the food of more than two-thirds of its very dense population, this is already a quite respectable figure; but it must also be said that it exports every year considerable
- 19. quantities of products of the soil. Thus, in the year 1910 she exported 254,730 tons of vegetables (as against 187,000 imported), 40,000 tons of fruit, 34,000 tons of plants and flowers (the whole nearly £3,000,000 worth), 256,000 of oleaginous grains, 18,500 tons of wool, nearly 60,000 tons of flax, and so on. I do not mention the exports of butter, rabbits, skins, an immense quantity of sugar (about 180,000 tons), the vegetable oils and the spirits, because considerable quantities of beet and potatoes are imported. In short, we have here an export of agricultural produce grown in the country itself attaining the figure of 48s. per head of population. All taken, there is thus no possibility of contesting the fact, that if the soil of Great Britain were cultivated only as the unfertile soil of Belgium is cultivated—notwithstanding all the social obstacles which stand in the way of an intensive culture, in Belgium as elsewhere—a much greater part of the population of these islands would obtain its food from the soil of its own land than is the case nowadays.[57] On the other side it must not be forgotten that Belgium is a manufacturing country which exports, moreover, manufactured home-made goods to the value of 198s. per head of population, and 150s. worth of crude or half-manufactured produce, while the total exports from the United Kingdom have only lately attained during the extraordinary year of 1911 the value of 201s. per inhabitant. As to separate parts of the Belgian territory, the small and naturally unfertile province of West Flanders not only grew in 1890 the food of its 580 inhabitants on the square mile, but exported agricultural produce to the value of 25s. per head of its population. And yet no one can read Laveleye’s masterly work without coming to the conclusion that Flemish agriculture would have realised still better results, were it not hampered in its growth by the steady and heavy increase of rent. In the face of the rent being increased each nine years, many farmers have lately abstained from further improvements.
- 20. Another example of what could be achieved by means of an effort of the nation seconded by its educated classes is given by Denmark. After the war of 1864, which ended in the loss of one of their provinces, the Danes made an effort widely to spread education amongst their peasants, and to develop at the same time an intensive culture of the soil. The result of these efforts is now quite evident. The rural population of Denmark, instead of flocking to the towns, has been increasing: in five years, 1906-1911, it rose from 1,565,585 to 1,647,350. Out of a total population of 2,775,100, no less than 990,900 find their living in agriculture, dairy work, and forestry. With a very poor soil, they have a cultivated area a trifle below 7,000,000 acres, out of which 2,773,320 acres are under cereals. Their wheat crops are on the average 406 /10 bushels per acre, and the value of the home-grown food-stuffs is estimated at £40,000,000, which makes a little less than £6 per acre. As to their exports of home-grown produce, they exceed the imports by £14,483,000. The chief cause of these successes are: A highly developed agricultural education, town markets accessible to all the growers, and, above all, co-operation, which again is a result of the effort that was made by the educated classes after the unfortunate war of 1864. Everyone knows that it is now Danish butter which rules the prices in the London market, and that this butter is of a high quality, which can only be attained in co-operative creameries with cold storage and certain uniform methods in producing butter. But it is not generally known that the Siberian butter, which is now imported in immense quantities into this country, is also a creation of the Danish co-operators. When they began to export their butter in large quantities, they used to import butter for their own use from the southern parts of the West Siberian provinces of Tobolsk and Tomsk, which are covered with prairies very similar to those of Winnipeg in Canada. At the outset this butter was of a most inferior quality, as it was made by every peasant household separately. The Danes began therefore to teach co-operation to the Russian peasants, and they were rapidly understood by the intelligent population of this fertile
- 21. region. The co-operative creameries began to spread with an astounding rapidity, without us knowing for some time wherefrom came this interesting movement. At the present time a steamer loaded with Siberian butter leaves every week one of the Baltic ports and brings to London many thousands of casks of Siberian butter. If I am not wrong, Finland has also joined lately in the same export. Without going as far as China, I might quote similar examples from elsewhere, especially from Lombardy. But the above will be enough to caution the reader against hasty conclusions as to the impossibility of feeding 46,000,000 people from 78,000,000 acres. They also will enable me to draw the following conclusions: (1) If the soil of the United Kingdom were cultivated only as it was forty- five years ago, 24,000,000 people, instead of 17,000,000, could live on home-grown food; and this culture, while giving occupation to an additional 750,000 men, would give nearly 3,000,000 wealthy home customers to the British manufactures. (2) If the cultivable area of the United Kingdom were cultivated as the soil is cultivated on the average in Belgium, the United Kingdom would have food for at least 37,000,000 inhabitants; and it might export agricultural produce without ceasing to manufacture, so as freely to supply all the needs of a wealthy population. And finally (3), if the population of this country came to be doubled, all that would be required for producing the food for 90,000,000 inhabitants would be to cultivate the soil as it is cultivated in the best farms of this country, in Lombardy, and in Flanders, and to utilise some meadows, which at present lie almost unproductive, in the same way as the neighbourhoods of the big cities in France are utilised for market- gardening. All these are not fancy dreams, but mere realities; nothing but the modest conclusions from what we see round about us, without any allusion to the agriculture of the future.
- 22. If we want, however, to know what agriculture can be, and what can be grown on a given amount of soil, we must apply for information to such regions as the district of Saffelare in East Flanders, the island of Jersey, or the irrigated meadows of Lombardy, which are mentioned in the next chapter. Or else we may apply to the market-gardeners in this country, or in the neighbourhoods of Paris, or in Holland, or to the “truck farms” in America, and so on. While science devotes its chief attention to industrial pursuits, a limited number of lovers of nature and a legion of workers whose very names will remain unknown to posterity have created of late a quite new agriculture, as superior to modern farming as modern farming is superior to the old three-fields system of our ancestors. Science seldom guided them, and sometimes misguided—as was the case with Liebig’s theories, developed to the extreme by his followers, who induced us to treat plants as glass recipients of chemical drugs, and who forgot that the only science capable of dealing with life and growth is physiology, not chemistry. Science seldom has guided them: they proceeded in the empirical way; but, like the cattle-growers who opened new horizons to biology, they have opened a new field of experimental research for the physiology of plants. They have created a totally new agriculture. They smile when we boast about the rotation system, having permitted us to take from the field one crop every year, or four crops each three years, because their ambition is to have six and nine crops from the very same plot of land during the twelve months. They do not understand our talk about good and bad soils, because they make the soil themselves, and make it in such quantities as to be compelled yearly to sell some of it: otherwise it would raise up the level of their gardens by half an inch every year. They aim at cropping, not five or six tons of grass on the acre, as we do, but from 50 to 100 tons of various vegetables on the same space; not £5 worth of hay but £100 worth of vegetables, of the plainest description, cabbage and carrots, and more than £200 worth under
- 23. intensive horticultural treatment. This is where agriculture is going now. We know that the dearest of all varieties of our staple food is meat; and those who are not vegetarians, either by persuasion or by necessity, consume on the average 225 lb. of meat—that is, roughly speaking, a little less than the third part of an ox—every year. And we have seen that, even in this country, and Belgium, two to three acres are wanted for keeping one head of horned cattle; so that a community of, say, 1,000,000 inhabitants would have to reserve somewhere about 1,000,000 acres of land for supplying it with meat. But if we go to the farm of M. Goppart—one of the promoters of ensilage in France—we shall see him growing, on a drained and well- manured field, no less than an average of 120,000 lb. of corn-grass to the acre, which gives 30,000 lb. of dry hay—that is, the food of one horned beast per acre. The produce is thus trebled. As to beetroot, which is used also for feeding cattle, Mr. Champion, at Whitby, succeeded, with the help of sewage, in growing 100,000 lb. of beet on each acre, and occasionally 150,000 and 200,000 lb. He thus grew on each acre the food of, at least, two or three head of cattle. And such crops are not isolated facts; thus, M. Gros, at Autun, succeeds in cropping 600,000 lb. of beet and carrots, which crop would permit him to keep four horned cattle on each acre. In fact, crops of 100,000 lb. of beet occur in numbers in the French competitions, and the success depends entirely upon good culture and appropriate manuring. It thus appears that while under ordinary high farming we need 2,000,000 acres, or more, to keep 1,000,000 horned cattle, double that amount could be kept on one-half of that area; and if the density of population required it, the amount of cattle could be doubled again, and the area required to keep it might still be one-half, or even one-third of what it is now. [58] French Gardening.—The above examples are striking enough, and yet those afforded by the market-gardening culture are still more striking. I mean the culture carried on in the neighbourhood of big
- 24. cities, and more especially the culture maraîchère round Paris. In this culture each plant is treated according to its age. The seeds germinate and the seedlings develop their first four leaflets in especially favourable conditions of soil and temperature; then the best seedlings are picked out and transplanted into a bed of fine loam, under a frame or in the open air, where they freely develop their rootlets, and, gathered on a limited space, receive more than the usual care. Only after this preliminary training are they bedded in the open ground, where they grow till ripe. In such a culture the primitive condition of the soil is of little account, because loam is made out of the old forcing beds. The seeds are carefully tried, the seedlings receive proper attention, and there is no fear of drought, because of the variety of crops, the liberal watering with the help of a steam engine, and the stock of plants always kept ready to replace the weakest individuals. Almost each plant is treated individually. There prevails, however, with regard to market-gardening, a misunderstanding which it would be well to remove. It is generally supposed that what chiefly attracts market-gardening to the great centres of population is the market. It must have been so; and so it may be still, but to some extent only. A great number of the Paris maraîchers, even of those who have their gardens within the walls of the city and whose main crop consists of vegetables in season, export the whole of their produce to England. What chiefly attracts the gardener to the great cities is stable manure; and this is not wanted so much for increasing the richness of the soil—one-tenth part of the manure used by the French gardeners would do for that purpose—but for keeping the soil at a certain temperature. Early vegetables pay best, and in order to obtain early produce not only the air but the soil as well must be warmed; and this is done by putting great quantities of properly mixed manure into the soil; its fermentation heats it. But it is evident that with the present development of industrial skill, the heating of the soil could be obtained more economically and more easily by hot-water pipes. Consequently, the French gardeners begin more and more to make use of portable pipes, or thermosiphons, provisionally established in
- 25. the cool frames. This new improvement becomes of general use, and we have the authority of Barral’s Dictionnaire d’Agriculture to affirm that it gives excellent results. Under this system stable manure is used mainly for producing loam.[59] As to the different degrees of fertility of the soil—always the stumbling-block of those who write about agriculture—the fact is that in market-gardening the soil is always made, whatever it originally may have been. Consequently—we are told by Prof. Dybowski, in the article “Maraîchers” in Barral’s Dictionnaire d’Agriculture—it is now a usual stipulation of the renting contracts of the Paris maraîchers that the gardener may carry away his soil, down to a certain depth, when he quits his tenancy. He himself makes it, and when he moves to another plot he carts his soil away, together with his frames, his water-pipes, and his other belongings. [60] I could not relate here all the marvels achieved in market- gardening; so that I must refer the reader to works—most interesting works—especially devoted to the subject, and give only a few illustrations.[61] Let us take, for instance, the orchard—the marais—of M. Ponce, the author of a well-known work on the culture maraîchère. His orchard covered only two and seven-tenths acres. The outlay for the establishment, including a steam engine for watering purposes, reached £1,136. Eight persons, M. Ponce included, cultivated the orchard and carried the vegetables to the market, for which purpose one horse was kept; when returning from Paris they brought in manure, for which £100 was spent every year. Another £100 was spent in rent and taxes. But how to enumerate all that was gathered every year on this plot of less than three acres, without filling two pages or more with the most wonderful figures? One must read them in M. Ponce’s work, but here are the chief items: More than 20,000 lb. of carrots; more than 20,000 lb. of onions, radishes and other vegetables sold by weight; 6,000 heads of cabbage; 3,000 of cauliflower; 5,000 baskets of tomatoes; 5,000 dozen of choice fruit; and 154,000 heads of salad; in short, a total of
- 26. 250,000 lb. of vegetables. The soil was made to such an amount out of forcing beds that every year 250 cubic yards of loam had to be sold. Similar examples could be given by the dozen, and the best evidence against any possible exaggeration of the results is the very high rent paid by the gardeners, which reaches in the suburbs of London from £10 to £15 per acre, and in the suburbs of Paris attains as much as £32 per acre. No less than 2,125 acres are cultivated round Paris in that way by 5,000 persons, and thus not only the 2,000,000 Parisians are supplied with vegetables, but the surplus is also sent to London. The above results are obtained with the help of warm frames, thousands of glass bells, and so on. But even without such costly things, with only thirty-six yards of frames for seedlings, vegetables are grown in the open air to the value of £200 per acre.[62] It is obvious, however, that in such cases the high selling prices of the crops are not due to the high prices fetched by early vegetables in winter; they are entirely due to the high crops of the plainest ones. 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
- 27. (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,
- 28. 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
- 29. 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.
- 30. 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
- 31. 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,
- 32. 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
- 33. 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
- 34. 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
- 35. 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
- 36. 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
- 37. 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
- 38. 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
- 39. 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
- 40. 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
- 41. 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.
- 42. 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
- 43. 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.
- 44. [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
- 45. 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.