The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1880-07-17 00:00:00

THE AGRICULTURAL LOOK-OUT.

The Times of Monday had a leader on the recent weather
and its influence on agricultural prospects. We make the
following extracts from the article :

Perhaps there never was a time when the weather,
which is often said to have contributed much to the
British character and Constitution, assumed so much
political importance as just now. In one way or
another the agricultural interest may be said to have
placed itself at the mercy of the changeful skies.
In the sister island, society and the primeval
laws for the protection of life and property
seem temporarily in abeyance, till at least the
potato can be pronounced safe and abundant. In
England, too, upon the agricultural failures of the
last two or three years is constructed a case, not
for forbearance, but for an entire change in the
relations between the landlord and the tenant. There
is scarcely a political question that can be answered
without a glance at the clouds, and perhaps a tap at
the barometer. For the last week it must be said
that the omens have been for revolution, not to say
anarchy. It has been a week of either incessant
rain or heavy showers. The meadow and seed hay
were not cut before their time, but the greater part has
been lying on the ground exposed to the alternation
of sunshine and rain, losing sweetness and strength
every hour. The spring drought has told on every
crop, and the rain comes too late alike for grass and
for corn. No crop, it is said, will be an averak,Ye. The
wheat plant is not tall or strong, and the ear is small.
The root crops have only just been placed out of
danger. Upon the whole, it is very doubtful whether
this year will do anything to make up for the losses of
the past. On the other hand, the confident and circum-
stantial predictions of an overwhelming importation
from America, which seemed to render it a hopelessly
losing business to grow wheat, or indeed, produce any-
thing in this country, are not borne out by the
present rate of imports. Wheat is rising on both
sides of the Atlantic. It used to be said in olden
times, "Wheat will always command a price." People
must have it; people are everywhere giving UD other
food for it; and mankind increase, and multiplies
more and more. Wheat has risen considerably since
the repeal of the Corn Laws, and since the Tithe
Commutation Act passed ten years before. On the
other hand, the crop is incurably fickle and precarious.
But other crops are not less so. It is hard to say
which is most liable to fail, the meadow or the corn-
field. The former is now suffering the effects of a dry
spring and a wet summer. The latter has also
suffered, but with sufficient sunshine would now give
a good yield. The year, thus far, no more counte-
nances a predominant dependance on grass than it
does on wheat, or any other description of grain.
Rather it repeats the homely warning against carry-
ing all your eggs in one basket.

A succession of bad years, to be followed possibly
by another, has suggested to a numerous class of
writers and speakers the revision and reconstruction
of our agricultural relations. The tenant-farmer, it is
expected, would be better able to secure himself and
to recoup himself if he had a larger interest in the
land—that is, if he stood somewhat more in the place
of the landlord. He would, in that use have more of
a reserve to draw upon when necessary. As matters
now are, he seldom has any reserve, except his stock,
which he can only use in hulthandry, and not to pay
rent with, or even to raise capital upon. A.
margin there must be somewhere. The landlord
is now credited with this happy margin, when he
is asked for a return, or abatement, of rent. As
this is confessedly a humiliating state of things,
the demand is that this margin should be the tenant's
own property; and that this chaiage should be effected
by the substitution of some form of tenant-right for
the terms of a written contract. . . . When gentle-
men are demanding with an eagerness hardly brooking
denial that land shall be as negotiable as stocks, shares,
or any description of paper, they do not for a moment
suppose that another party is to have a lien upon it,
except of the most definite character and coming
within arithmetical reckoning. When other gentlemen
are crying loudly for the sub-division of leviathan
properties into more marketable and useful quantities,
they do not anticipate that when they have reckoned
with one owner they will have another account to settle
with five hnndred. Still less do they anticipate that
when a modest slice of a ducal domain has been
knocked down to them in the open market they
will have to go through a tedious and difficult
negotiation with the aid of experts, actuarias, and
valuers before they will be able to set foot on the
coveted acquisition or call it their own. In point of
fact, the present state of things is exactly that which
in all time has been regarded as the real defence of the
landlord and tenant system. Who is to bear the
brunt of bad times? Who is to keep things going
when Nature has failed? The landlord has to do
this, and he must be sustained in his office. He must
have the means in the first place. If anything has to
be done for the relief of the other parties, this must be
left to his discretion, or his humanity, the State
itself being always answerable for the utterly helpless
and destitute.

No doubt there have been great faults committed on
all sides, and now is the time to mark the moral. Not
very long ago, good harvests and good timenenerally
led to a singular inflation of hope and self-confidence.
Everybody was to be rich at once. Land was sold at
a great advance, and let at a greater. The high rentals
figured in the advertisement and told in the mart.
Old farmers were astonished at the rent which compa-
rative strangers and novices were found ready to offer
for land the productiveness of which was known to a
nicety in the neighbourhood. Upon the faith of in-
creased rents, and the value it seemed to guarantee, all
sorts of expenditure were incurred, the landlord and
tenant often vying in extravagance. Market tables and
dining rooms rang with stories of little fortunes made,
with no trouble or risk, on beasts or sheep; and
people who knew very little about them went in
heavily into what seemed a royal road to wealth.
Times changed, the demand fell, the skies lowered,
the fields were drowned, the poor creatures rotted,
and their owners found themselves often without the
means of paying either rent or the debts incurred in a
new speculation. All have been to blame; for, no
doubt, this excessive confidence in the fortunes to be
made out of land was lately shared equally by land-
lords and tenants. A man must have plenty of ex-
perience and great command of his reason not to be
carried away by the generous and ambitious hopes
suggested by a visit to an Agricultural Show. Rich
indeed must be the soil and the profession that
raise such noble animals and such machines, and that
exemplify so grandly man's dominion over nature.
Old farmers, indeed, shrug their shoulders, and say,
more in looks than words, that these are not the
animals or the instruments by which fortunes ti,re
made. But, like all other enthusiasa.is,
.scientific
agriculture and high farming have beneficial influences
far beyond the accidents of place or time. The world
follows our lead in these matters. French and German
writers sometimes gratify their vanity by enumerat-
ing the points in which their countrps. lead and we
are content to follow, to learn, to imitate, and to
apply. The English gentleman can as proudly point
to one of the noblest as well as most needful of human
occupations in which we lead and teach the world.