FARMING IN ENGLAND.

Timaru Herald, Volume LVIII, Issue 1657, 10 January 1895, Page 4

FARMING IN ENGLAND.

A writer m Lon^?iucn's Magazine says there is a cry arising throughout the country that farms do not pay ; that a man with a moderate 400 acres and a moderate £1000 of his own, -with borrowed money added, cannot get a reasonable remuneration from those acres. Farmers say they would sooner be hotelkeepers, tailors, grocers, anything but farmers. These are men who have tried the task of subduing the stubborn earth, which is no longer bountiful to her children. Much reason exists m this cry j which is heard m the market ordinary, m the lobby, at the club meet-, ings — wherever agriculturists congregate, and which will soon force itself out upon the public. It is like this. Rents have risen. Five shillings per acre makes an enormous difference,: though nominally only an additional £100 on 400 acres. But as m agricultural profits one must not reckon more than 8 per cent., this 5s per acre represents nearly another £1000, which must be invested m the business, and which must be niade to return interest to pay the additional rent. If that cannot be done, then it represents a dead £100 per annum taken out of the agriculturist's pocket. Then — labour, the great agricultural crux. If the occupier pays 3s per week more to seven men, that adds more than another £50 per annum to his" outgoings, to meet which you must somehow make your acres represent another £500. Turnpikes fall m, and the roads are repaired at the ratepayers' cost. Compulsory education — for it is compulsory m reality, since it compels voluntary schools to be built— comes next. A farmer, too, nowadays, has a natural desire to live as other people m his station of life do. He cannot reconcile himself to rafty bacon, cheese, radishes, turnip-tops, homespun cloth, smock frocks. He cannot see why his girls should, milk the cows or wheel out manure from the yards any more than the daughters of tradesmen ; neither that his sons should say " Ay" and" Noa," and exhibit a total disregard of grammar and ignorance of all social customs. The piano, lie thinks, is quite as much m its place m his cool parlour as m the stuffy so-called drawing-room at his grocer's m the petty town hard by, where they are so particular to distinguish the\ social ranks of " professional tradesmen " from common tradesmen. Here m all this, even supposing it kept down to economical limits, there exists a considerable margin of expenditure greater than m our forefathers' time. Experience every day brings home more and more the fatal truth that moderate farms do not pay, and there are even ominous whispers about the 2,000 acres system. The agriculturist says that, work how he may, he only gets 8 per cent, per annum ; the tradesman, still more the manufacturer, gets only 2 percent, each time, but^ie turns his money over twenty times a year, and so gets 40 per cent, per annum.