The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1881-05-07 00:00:00

THE AGRICULTURAL OUTLOOK.

The Times of Sionday commented upon the present pros-
pects of agriculture in a leader, from which we make the
following extracts :

The present year is regarded by agriculturists as
eminently critical, and the month we are now entering
as the most critical season in it. Upon the weather
oi the next three or four weeks, we are told, depend
many important decisions affecting property, o,Tupa-
tion, and even residence. Is land here worth owning
or farming, and is England a country for a man
brought up to farming and nothing else to pin his
fortunes and his life to? These questions have often
been asked before, and have been sometitnesisuggested
by a state of things for which the weather and the
soil and the ordinary condition of British husbandry
could not be wholly answerable. But they are asked
now with a severity and a precision indicating a reso-
lution to accept the answer which this year will give
to them. So deep is the desperation, so utter the
recklessness avowed in some quarters, that it is a
comfort to remember there are other lands, other
climates, other social and political conditions, easily,
cheaply, and immediately accessible to the Britisk
farmer. Every Englishman may hesitate to recom-
mend a change of allegiance, or even the long nngenial
winter of British America; but a tenth part of the
capital necessary to stock a small farm will take a.
whole agricultural family to any part of our magnifi-
cent anu delightful Australian colonies. In Tasmania,
the smallest of them, it was stated in our columns
the ether day that while there are twelve millions and
a half acres of good land only half a million have been
brought under cultivation. It is, however, only as a
last resource that we suggest emigration, nor can we
think there is any inhumanity in the idea. A very
large part of onr people, men of the best families,
heirs of wealth and even of title, well educated, and
accustomed to appreciate the pleasures of civilized
fcrrced to commit themselves to the wide world,
and wander over its widest seas and its remotest
shores. So why may not the British farmer relieve

the pressure at home and find elbow room in one
of our colonies? Our farmers, however' are a very
stay-at-home people, very old English, and with
qualities very valuable to the special requirements of
English agriculture. They are the practical medium
between the highest and the lowest partners in the
soil, between those that enjoy it and those that work
it. We have only to glance at Ireland to see what our
case would be here if our tenant-farmers really took
themselves off in any considerable numbers to fresh
+'.elds and pastures new. For them it is hardly so
serious a question as it is for us that remain and have
no other resource. Here, then, is the question of the
day, and the next few weeks are to decide for us, so
we are told, whether it is worth an ordinary English
farmer's while to go on fighting against increasing
odds in the old country.

The weather until within the last few days has not
been pleasant, either to those who have to brave its
worst in the country or to those who contemplate the
stern realities of agricultural work from a respectful
distance. We have had a long spell of unprecedented
cold, and the east wind has come back to us again and
again, as if it would never take its final leave. On
the one hand the ground has been well cleaned and
worked, and the spring sowing has made ample
amends for the exceptional wet of last autumn. The
land which were told then it would take years to get
into order is nowproclaimed in good condition. But
the growing corn crops ar,e still backward, and the
wheat especially still wants both sun and rain. This
crop retains its prescriptive precedence in all calcula-
tions. The older of us may remember the days when
it was as usual to say the wheat crop paid the rent in
England as that the pig paid it in Ireland. All farm-
ing was to be directed to produce the greatest possible
breadth of wheat and the heaviest yield. It was the
climax of the rotation, and the pivot round which the
system revolved. But now for half a century every
year has diminished the comparative importance of
the crop, which may now rise or fall to the amount
of five million quarters, or £10,000,000 sterling,
and yet be compensated or otherwise by other items
of increasing importance. If cultivation is not now
receding SO rapidly rand universally from our cities as
it was said to do in the days of Imperial Rome, it is
because we have other uses for it besides the produc-
tion of grain. The state of our meadows is at least as
important just now. All accounts agree that they
still show the effect of that parching frost which the
poet says performs the effects of heat
In England there can be no need either of flight or
of extraordinary measures of legislation. We manage
these matters mole quietly. It is true we are not
uniformly wise. 18oth landlords and farmers are
liable to excesses of estimate and self-confidence,
sudden elevations of temperament, and passing cre-
dulities, Three or four years ago they saw nothing
but a rising market; farmers bid wildly one over
another, and landlords availed themselves of the
universal delusion. That bubble has burst. Agricul-
ture has been found, what it was always known to be,
uphill work, requiring much economy and many hard-
ships, involving great risks, and therefore only
to be carried on with extreme caution at every
step. There are also in agriculture much more than
in other industries certain personal relations between
all the parties concerned, from the landlord to the
labourer. Perhaps the spirit of commercial specula-
tion which has lately invaded, not to say infested,
agriculture, has led people to put these relations out
of sight. The results shows that they cannot be put
out of sight without a penalty. Landlords had better
have been satisfied with the old tenants, and the old
rent, too; and the tenants had better have thought
for their labourers as carefully as for themselves.
It is a matter in which "the half is greater than
the whole," as the old Greek saying has it, for a
moderate rent, as it might seem in good times, is
more likely to last than one screwed to a higher
pitch The infatuation, for such it was,
spread all round. The labourers thought they had
a right to better wages and could secure them by join-
ing all together and standing out. The farmers thought
they could make larger profits with sufficient certainty
to warrant paying more rent. The landlords thought
they could safely insist on more rent. There is
probably hardly a landlord in England who does not
think his rent inadequate to his just expectation. It
is all the same, whether he has bought the land or in-
herited it, for in either case he finds land ot equal
value, and perhaps lower recommendations in other
respects, worth in the market a capital sum far out
of proportion to the rent The only remedy for
these extravagances of opinion is for the landlord to
shake off the little halo of prejudices and fancies sur-
rounding his own position, and put himself as much
as possible into the position of his tenant, or of any
farmer wishing to take his land. In that case he will
find a moderate rent based on a long series of years far
more likely to be paid regularly than one tendered
hastily, even though spontaneously, in a general
fever of competition.