The Cincinnati daily star. [volume] ([Cincinnati, Ohio]) 1875-1880, 1880-06-25
THE FUTUREOF ENGLISH FARMS.
British AgricuIturists Advised to
Quit Growing wheat.
ri npdan Titt,aal

| hriush ASffcubfurlsts Advtseo 10
Quit Growing wheat.
| london Timegl
America, as a granary, embraces more
than the Union. In three years the
railway from Thunder Bay to the Red
River may be expected to be in full ope-
ration and the Welland Canal to be COM
pleted. A few months since one of our
correspondents, after dazzling British
emigrants and terrifying British farmers
with his descriptions of the wheaton
principalities and grand duchies which
they call farms in Dakota, reviewed also
the destinies of Manitoba and foresees
that wheat, which may be grown in the
Canadian Northwest for Is shillings a
quarter. will not be long in finding its
way to markets in which the average
price for thirty years has been 81 shil-
lings all but penny. Wherever the eye
looks TO the West and Northwest of the
American Continent it beholds sea of
golden wheat ripening for the food of
hungry Englishmen.
1t is splendid prospect, yet to one
class of Englishmen anything but joyous
and inspirlting. A Manchester cotton
spinner is not delighted at news that his
neighbor has erected mill able to turn
out prints at half his prices, though the
wearer of cotton goods will benefit.
Farmers can not be blamed for regard
ing as an unmixed calamity the discov-
cry of a vast wheat mine across the At
lantic which dispenses their own neigh
boihood from buying its bread of them.
The change will not come in moment.
Cheap food does not at once displace
dear food any more than the genius of
an unknown painter shines out instantly
from the wallis of public gallery to crit
ical eyes not previously instructed by the
ear.
Of British agriculture the growth of
wheat has been hitherto the staple. Not
British farmers alone, but the whole ma
ton, might well have it's satisfaction at
the prospect of an illimitable wheat pro-
duction in the United States and the
Dominion clouded over did the an
nouncement imply at once temporary
stagnation of the British ploughman's
labor and the British farmers capital,
and worse still, permanent annihilation
of the worth of British arabic soil itself.
DR.. Lyon Playfair, in his very interest
ing article in the June number of Fra
zer's Magazine. explains that no such
terrific consequences are to be feared.
Wheat" remarks DR.. Playfair forcibly,
lis not the highest representative of cul-
tivation. 1t is really the pioneer of
agriculture" 1t is very proper crop
for the peasants of Central Russia, or.
the Danubian principalties, or the
settlers in Dakota and on the Red River
to grow.
Regions in which capital is more pro,
fuse, as we'll as population, and in which
agriculture might have higher quality
of intelligence also at command, are ca
pable of something more various and
more complex. The fact is, as DR.. Play
fair shows, that American farmers in
the Eastern States have had to face the
same difficulties British agriculture is
beginning to feel. New York and New
England farmers have left off trying to
grow wheat against the Northwest. But
New York and New England farms are
still cultivated at profit. East Amer
ican farmers, DR.. Playfair observes, have
taken to dairy farming and to raising
call sorts of vegetables, fruits and flow
ers to meet the demands of the cities"
There is nothing in English soil or even
elm ate which incapacitates it for such
production. British and Irish dairy
farming is still in its infancy.
British and Irish butter is commonly
as inferior as DR.. Playfair seems to think
it. Pure and skilltully made native
butter need, however, dread no compe--
tition of "butter from the great prairie
lands" Again there are scores of vege-
tables unknown to English kitchens, not
from absence Of taste in the consumer,
but because they are not to be bought,
which English farmers might plant.
With British capital and the energy the
British farmer displays in Minnesota
elected at home in Essex and Somerset
shire, English farming has as example a
future before it as farming in New York
and New England. Nothing is more
certain than that English land will never
go begging either for capitalists to own
or for farmers to make livelihood off it.
Edgar EaWcett.