The Norfolk weekly news-journal., 1910-10-28
Land Cheap In England,

ter.
Land Cheap In England,
Except few places along the coast
which Is DOGGY, and few deltas VI
the larger rivers. what little soil there
Is In England lies upon chalk or flint.
| This gives the English farmer poor
SOIL but by good farming he manages
to make 1t produce more than the fer.
| tile soils of Nebraska. In spite of the
thin soil, the general appearance of
the country Is mighty pleasing to the
eye. 1t Is country of parks in which
one finds thousands of stately oaks,
and elms, and sycamores, some of
which appear to have been growing
J for hundreds of years. The roads are
ideal, both for traffic and cycling, al.
ways bordered upon either side with
well trimmed hedge of hawthorne, 10.
Gust or olive, The road bed is ma
cadam in structure, built and maintain
ed by experts as in France. The
felds are partitioned with hedge, too,
and In these fields can be seen live
stock, the blood of which is the foun-
dalton of all good stock throughout
the civilized world. Without this stock
the British farmer would be bankrupt,
FOR he is nearly so with it. | am GO
ing to surprise the farmer readers
OF The News, by telling them that
land is cheaper in England than it is
around Norfolk. The best farm in
England can be bought for 800 per
acre and there are thousands of farms
here to be had at $50 to $40 per acre,
and no buyers. The improvements
upon these farms in many instances
have cost 5000 per acre. Last Friday
in the county of Suffolk, one of Eng
lands best counties, farm of 1000
acres was sold at a foreclosure sale,
and it brought only $22,50O, scarcely
10 percent of the cost of the improve
ments. There are two causes for
this, the one being outrageous taxes,
the other too much tomfoolery. When
the farmer should be in the field or
attend to his business, you are more
likely to find him riding his hunter
behind the hounds. The English
farmer has inherited a large fund of
nonsense, dogs, guns, hunters, polo
and other such things, and all togeth-
er, 1t soon means bankruptcy.
But for all this the British farmer
Is great character. His love of
honesty and fair play is a matter of
history. His intelligence is great, of
its kind. He is slow to understand,
yet great thinker. His theory of
agriculture is the best of which we
know, but his time is so taken up
with nonsense that he has no time
left to put it into practice. 1t was he
who made animal husbandry a science,
but now he is the pupil. Nebraska
during her half century's existence as
state has done more for agriculture,
than England in her 1000 years. The
farms here are large, some up to sew
eral thousand acres. Help is cheap.
Farm help can be had for $2.4O per
week. yet it costs the British farmer
more for labor than it does the Ne
braska farmer who pays three or four
times as much. Friday | saw nine
men hauling out manure at one farm,
Two men in Nebraska with a spreader
would do more than the nine. 1t is
not so much the wages one pays, as
it is the amount of labor you get for
that wage. All workmen here are
slow, which makes labor come high in |
spite of the seemingly low wage.
But there is some hope for the Brit |
ish farmer. for he is sufficiently intelli- !
gent to see where he is at, and he is
doing his best, after fashion, to bet |
ter his condition. A few days before
leaving Belgium | wrote Fred Smith, |
secretary of the Suffolk Horse society. |
at Woodbridge, that | would be at |
the service of the society on Satur-
day. Mr. Smith had a sale booked for
that date, but he planned for three
for the day, one at his town
for 1890 In the morning, another for
o p. m. at the close of the sale, and
the third at the home of the president
of the society, Sir Arthur Leedam, at
Fromlingham. These meetings were
by total of 1000 farmers.
all eager to learn of American pro-
gress in their chosen calling. When
told them if they desired to keep
pace with the Americans they must
follow the pillow more and the hounds
less, and be seen at their stock barns
more often than the race track and
cockpit, they were greatly pleased and
ready enough to admit that it was
these things which had made their
business a failure.
This farm sale was an interesting
thing, and all the more interesting
because it was held at Boulge Hall.
place so famous in the history and lit
erature of England, and the place
where the renowned Fitzgerald lies
buried. This estate is now owned by
Eaton White, NJ. p, for the southeast
Suffolk district, and the sale was the
end of farm tenancy of forty-nine
years. Here they charge an admis-
sion of sixty cents to be permitted to
attend farm sale, but this entities
one to a ticket to an elegant six