CIVILIZATION AND ITS EFFECTS ON THE FARMER.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 3803, 15 June 1885, Page 2

CIVILIZATION AND ITS EFFECTS ON THE FARMER.

Forty years ago the British farmer, says the “Mail,” was as a rule, a wealthy man, and in the days when Arkright labored shoddy was unknown, and the territorial landlord was not only lord over his dominions, but socially and politically a man o£ some importance, la those days subsoiling,foreign manure, and expensive ogricultural machinery were unknown, and with no other aid than seed, the dung from the stables of the farm, old wooden ploughs and unsightly and crudely shaped wooden harrows, immense fortunes were made out of the land, and to bo a farmer was to be regarded as a man of some importance and consideration. The mistress and the master wore never idle while Jane, Mary, and Annie, and Jack, Tom and Harry, the farmer’s daughters and sons, were always busy either in the dairy or the field. With the introduction of new appliances all these oonditions were changed. We all know that the farmer of forty years ago was slow to adopt them. Like all of a conservetive turn of mind, ho was not favorable to sudden changes, and so it came to pass that he regarded the application of foreign manures as calculated to impair the vitality of the soil, while subsoiling and improving ploughs and agricultural machinery generally wore looked upon I

at so many innovations, introduced with no other object than that of benefitting agents and manufacturers, and of increasing the working expenses of his holding. Still, the time came when, owing to what is called keeping pace “with the spirit of the times,” the whole conditions of farming were changed. The scientific chemist and the agricultural implement maker prevailed, and with the new light thus diffused over the soil there set in a desire for the refinements of the age on the part of the farmer’s sons and daughters ; and so, while the working expenses of an English farm wera enhanced, and a considerable portion of the profile devoted to luxuries which their fathers knew not, they ignored the fact that there were pioneers ontin Trans-Atlantic countries preparing to compete with them, under more profitable circumstances than they could work, in their own markets.