Britain For The British Part 22

Can we produce our own bread, meat, and vegetables? Can we produce all, or nearly all, our b.u.t.ter, milk, eggs, cheese, and fruit?

And will it _pay_ to produce these things if we are able to produce them at all?

The great essential is bread. Can we grow our own wheat? On this point I do not see how there can be any doubt whatever.

In 1841 Britain grew wheat for 24,000,000 of people, and at that time not nearly all her land was in use, nor was her farming of the best.

Now we have to find food, or at any rate bread and meat and vegetables, for 40,000,000.

Wheat, then, for 40,000,000. At present we consume 29,000,000 quarters.

Can we grow 29,000,000 quarters in our own country?

Certainly we can. The _average_ yield per acre in Britain is 28 bushels, or 3 quarters. That is the _average_ yield on British farms. It can be increased; but let us take it first upon that basis.

At 3 quarters to the acre, 8,000,000 acres would produce 28,000,000 quarters; 9,000,000 acres would produce 31,500,000 quarters.

Therefore we require less than 9,000,000 acres of wheat land to grow a year's supply of wheat for 40,000,000 persons.

Now we have in Great Britain and Ireland about 33,000,000 acres of cultivatable land. Deduct 9,000,000 for wheat, and we have 24,000,000 acres left for vegetables, fruit, cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry.

Can any man say, in the face of these figures, that we are incapable of growing our own wheat?

Suppose the average is put too high. Suppose we could only average a yield of 20 bushels to the acre, or 2 quarters, we could still grow 29,000,000 quarters on less than 12,000,000 acres.

It is evident, then, that we can at anyrate grow our own wheat.

Here I shall quote from an excellent book, _Fields, Factories, and Workshops_, by Prince Kropotkin. Having gone very carefully into the facts, the Prince has arrived at the following conclusions:--

1. If the soil of the United Kingdom were cultivated only as it _was_ thirty-five years ago, 24,000,000 people could live on home-grown food.

2. If the cultivatable soil 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.

3. If the population of this country came to be doubled, all that would be required for producing food for 80,000,000 inhabitants would be to cultivate the soil as it is _now_ cultivated in the best farms of this country, in Lombardy, and in Flanders.

Why, indeed, should we not be able to raise 29,000,000 quarters of wheat? We have plenty of land. Other European countries can produce, and do produce, their own food.

Take the example of Belgium. In Belgium the people produce their own food. Yet their soil is no better than ours, and their country is more densely populated, the figures being: Great Britain, per square mile, 378 persons; Belgium, per square mile, 544 persons.

Does that silence the commercial school? No. They have still one argument left. They say that even if we can grow our own wheat we cannot grow it as cheaply as we can buy it.

Suppose we cannot. Suppose it will cost us 2s. a quarter more to grow it than to buy it. On the 23,000,000 quarters we now import we should be saving 2,000,000 a year.

Is that a very high price to pay for security against defeat by starvation in time of war?

A battle-ship costs 1,000,000. If we build two extra battle-ships in a year to protect our food supply we spend nearly all we gain by importing our wheat, even supposing that it costs us 2s. a quarter more to grow than to buy it.

But is it true that we cannot grow wheat as cheaply as we can buy it? If it is true, the fact may doubtless be put down to two causes. First, that we do not go to work in the best way, nor with the best machinery; second, that the farmer is handicapped by rent. Of course if we have to pay rent to private persons for the use of our own land, that adds to the cost of the rent.

One acre yields 28 bushels, or 3 quarters of wheat in a year. If the land be rented at 21s. an acre that will add 6s. a quarter to the cost of wheat.

In the _Industrial History of England_ I find the question of why the English farmer is undersold answered in this way--

The answer is simple. His capital has been filched from him surely, but not always slowly, by a tremendous increase in his rent. The landlords of the eighteenth century made the English farmer the foremost agriculturist in the world, but their successors of the nineteenth have ruined him by their extortions.... In 1799 we find land paying nearly 20s. an acre.... By 1850 it had risen to 38s.

6d.... 2 an acre was not an uncommon rent for land a few years ago, the average increase of English rents being no less than 26 per cent. between 1854 and 1879.... The result has been that the average capital per acre now employed in agriculture is only about 4 or 5, instead of at least 10, as it ought to be.

If the rents were as high as 2 an acre when our poor farmers were struggling to make both ends meet, it is little wonder they failed. A rent of 2 an acre means a land tax of more than 11s. a quarter on wheat. The price of wheat in the market at present is about 25s. a quarter. A rent charge of 21s. per acre would amount to more than 10,000,000 on the 9,000,000 we should need to grow all our wheat. A rent charge of 2 an acre would amount to 18,000,000. That would be a heavy sum for our farmers to lift before they went to market.

Moreover, agriculture has been neglected because all the mechanical and chemical skill, and all the capital and energy of man, have been thrown into the struggle for trade profits and manufacturing pre-eminence. We want a few Faradays, Watts, Stephensons, and Cobdens to devote their genius and industry to the great food question. Once let the public interest and the public genius be concentrated upon the agriculture of England, and we shall soon get silenced the croakers who talk about the impossibility of the country feeding her people.

But is it true that under fair conditions wheat can be brought from the other side of the world and sold here at a price with which we cannot compete? Prince Kropotkin thinks not. He says the French can produce their food more cheaply than they can buy it; and if the French can do this, why cannot we?

But in case it should be thought that I am prejudiced in favour of Prince Kropotkin's book or against the factory system, I will here print a quotation from a criticism of the book which appeared in the _Times_ newspaper, which paper can hardly be suspected of any leanings towards Prince Kropotkin, or of any eagerness to acknowledge that the present industrial system possesses "acknowledged evils."

Seriously, Prince Kropotkin has a great deal to say for his theories.... He has the genuine scientific temper, and n.o.body can say that he does not extend his observations widely enough, for he seems to have been everywhere and to have read everything....

Perhaps his chief fault is that he does not allow sufficiently for the ingrained conservatism of human nature and for the tenacity of vested interests. But that is no reason why people should not read his book, which will certainly set them thinking, and may lead a few of them to try, by practical experiments, to lessen some of the acknowledged evils of the present industrial system.

Just notice what the Tory _Times_ says about "the tenacity of _vested interests_" and the "_acknowledged evils_ of the present industrial system." It is a great deal for the _Times_ to say.

But what about the meat?

Prince Kropotkin deals as satisfactorily with the question of meat-growing as with that of growing wheat, and his conclusion is this--

Our means of obtaining from the soil whatever we want, under _any_ climate and upon _any_ soil, have lately improved at such a rate that we cannot foresee yet what is the limit of productivity of a few acres of land. The limit vanishes in proportion to our better study of the subject, and every year makes it vanish farther and farther from our sight.

I have, I think, quoted enough to show that there is no natural obstacle to our production in this country of all the food our people need.

Britain _can_ feed herself, and therefore, upon the ground of her use for foreign-grown food, the factory system is not necessary.

But I hope my readers will buy this book of Prince Kropotkin, and read it. For it is a very fine book, a much better book than I can write.

It can be ordered from the _Clarion_ Office, 72 Fleet Street, and the price is 1s. 3d. post free.

As to the vegetables and the fruit, I must refer you to the Prince's book; but I shall quote a few pa.s.sages just to give an idea of what _can_ be done, and _is being done_, in other countries in the way of intensive cultivation of vegetables and fruit.

Prince Kropotkin says that the question of soil is a common stumbling-block to those who write about agriculture. Soil, he says, does not matter now, nor climate very much. There is a quite new science of agriculture which _makes_ its own soil and modifies its climate. Corn and fruit can be grown on _any_ soil--on rock, on sand, on clay.

Man, not Nature, has given to the Belgian soil its present productivity.

And now read this--