AN ENGLISH POTATO FARM.

Marlborough Express, Volume XLVII, Issue 143, 19 June 1913, Page 6

AN ENGLISH POTATO FARM.

So little is done for the English tanner in the war of advertising him t;hat overseas; peoples are apt to forget that he still leads the way in many of the highest forms of agriculture.. Even' Americans:, vho are apt to believe that they possess all the big things, should be impressed by the following account of a Lincolnshire potato farm:—"When the potato ki n&- %W- DenTlis, head of the firm of W. Dennis and Sons, Limited, had lo miles of private railway laid round •his farm, neighbor farmers shook their heads and said these were strange times. The sight of the railway track performing the functions of the picturesque harvest wain filled them with curiosity and perhaps foreboding. , Was this the dawn of the clockwork farm? Was agriculture to be dragged from antediluvian Arcady and placed in the realm of ordinary business? The firm has just brought a far more startling innovation into agriculture, one that marks the third step in the progress of the rural worker since feudal times. Profit-sharing is the name of the new change which has come upon the Dennis farms, extending to some 7000 acres at Kirton, in South Lincolnshire. The new departure has already been tried in the form of a bonus which has just been distributed to eaoh of the regular agricultural employees. This bonus is the preliminary to a regular scheme of profit-sharing, which is now being drawn up, and will shortly be presented to the employees. At present, calculations are being made to determine, taking into consideration their wages and length of service, how this may best be apportioned among the various grades of workers, sush as: Administrative (office) staff, riding foremen in charge of a number of farms, farm foremen, men in. charge of stock and horses, laborers. The bonus for 1912, just distributed, was arranged on somewhat arbitrary lines, as an experiment, pending the completion of the detailed scheme. A1 present this will not include the distributing staffs at the firm's various branches—in London, Liverpool Paris, and elsewhere—but it is quit* possible that these, too, may later bi brought, into the scheme, so that ■ever; ■employee ■ may have, a direct interesi in the prosperity of the firm. VMessri W. Dennis and Sons, Limited, claiir to be ifaet largest pdtato-groAvers :ir th-e world, and Mr W. Dennis, th< founder of the firm, is known far anc wid© as the 'potato king.' It is near ]y half a contuTy since the firm began and now the Lincolnshire agricultura employees alone number 500 in norma times, rising now and then to 900 Beside its 15 miles of light railway the firm is distinguished by having 2( miles of private telephones, so thai the hands arc available- for any snd den call, such as a change in th< ■weather brings, instead of having t< bo summoned, in the bad old way, bj a slow-moving herald afoot. Motorcars convey the head men from plaof

to place. Typists—a whole battalion of them—send out the day's orders to each farm, and the ploughmen, instead of homeward plodding his weary way in ; the ancient poetic style, pops on a railway truck and gets across the two or three miles that separate him from lionae and tea in a time that would have made his "rude forefathers" gasp with surprise."