At the same time the culture of small fruit—gooseberries, raspberries, currants, and especially strawberries—took an immense development. Enormous quantities of strawberries are now grown in Mid and South Kent, where we find the culture of fruit combined with large jam factories. One of such factories is connected with great fruit farms covering 2,000 acres at Swanley, and its yearly output attains 3,500 tons of jam, 850 tons of candied peel, and more than 100,000 bottles of bottled fruit. An extensive horticulture has also developed of late in Cambridgeshire, wherefrom fruit is sent partly fresh to London and Manchester, and partly is transformed on the spot in the jam factory at Histon. No less than 250 workpeople were employed at this factory at the time of Rider Haggard’s visit in 1900, and no less than 7,600 tons were exported; the most interesting result of this industry combined with agriculture being that quite a number of small farmers, renting from three to twenty acres each, have grown round the jam factory. “Altogether,” Mr. Haggard wrote, “fruit and flower culture has increased enormously; so that, in 1901, from 4,000 to 5,000 acres in the neighbourhood of Wisbech were devoted to this trade. Plums, apples, pears, small fruit, as also cauliflowers, asparagus, rhubarb, narcissi, pansies and other flowers were grown here on a grand scale, and as much as from 130 to 140 tons of gooseberries and from 60 to 70 tons of strawberries were despatched from Wisbech in one single day.” “The result of this industry,” Mr. Haggard adds, “was that the population of Wisbech and the number of houses in this little town have rapidly increased; the land has increased in value considerably in the past twenty years, and as much as £200 an acre had been given for choice land-holdings suitable for fruit culture.” (Rural England, vol. ii., pp. 52, 54, 55.) In other words, the net result of the labour spent by the farmers and of the intelligent enterprise of the industrials was, as everywhere, immensely to increase the value of the land for the benefit of the landlords. Mr. Haggard’s conclusion is worth mentioning, as he writes as follows: “Broadly, however, I may say that where the farms are large and corn is chiefly grown, there is little or no prosperity, while where they are small and assisted by pastures or fruit culture, both owners and tenants are doing fairly well.”[120] A recognition well worth mentioning, as it comes from an explorer who took at the outset of his inquest a most pessimistic view on unprotected agriculture.
I also ought to mention Essex, where fruit-growing has taken of late a notable development, and Hampshire, where the acreage under fruit has trebled since 1880, according to the testimony of the author of the already mentioned Britannica article. The same must be said of Worcestershire, and especially of the Evesham district. This last is a most instructive region. Owing to certain peculiarities of its soil, which render it very profitable for growing asparagus and plum trees, and partly owing to the maintenance in this region of the old “Evesham custom” (according to which from times immemorial the ingoing tenant had to pay the outgoing tenant, not the landlord, for the agricultural improvements)—a custom maintained till nowadays[121]—the small-holdings system and the culture of vegetables and fruit have developed to a remarkable extent. The result is that out of a rural area of 10,000 acres, 7,000 have already been taken in small holdings of under fifty acres each, and the demand for them, far from being satisfied, is still on the increase, so that in 1911 there were still nearly four hundred farmers waiting for 2,000 acres. A new town has grown at Evesham, its population of 8,340 persons being almost entirely composed of gardeners and gardeners’ labourers; its markets, held twice a week, remind one of markets in the south of France; and the export traffic on the railways radiating from that little town is as lively as if it were a busy industrial spot.
One cannot read the pages given by Mr. Rider Haggard to the Bewdley and Evesham districts without being impressed by what can be obtained from the soil in England, and by what has to be done by the nation and all those who care for its well-being in obtaining from the soil what it is ready to give, if only labour be applied to it.
In the Bewdley district we see very well how the efforts of a Small Holdings Society are giving the opportunity to a number of small farmers to transform an indifferent and sometimes very poor or stony land into a fertile soil which yields rich crops of fruit, and upon which the keeping of milch-cows is combined with fruit-growing. We see also how in the big farms, as well as in the small ones, fruit-growing is carried on with knowledge and care—and, consequently, with a substantial profit for both the community and the farmers—which makes the author exclaim: “How different in most counties! In Norfolk, for instance (and I may add in Devonshire), the ordinary farm orchard is stocked as a rule with faggot-headed trees pruned only by the wind. Even the dead wood is left uncut; yet it is common to hear farmers complain of the quality of the fruit, and that it will not pay to grow” (vol. i., p. 338).
Speaking of Catshill, Mr. Haggard gives also a very interesting instance of how a colony of people called “Nailers,” who lived formerly by making nails by hand, and compelled to abandon this trade when machine-made nails were introduced, took to agriculture, and how they succeed with it. Some intelligent people having bought a farm of 140 acres and divided it into small farms, from 2½ to 8 acres, these small holdings were offered to the nailers; and at the time of Mr. Haggard’s visit “every instalment which was due had been paid up.” No able-bodied man out of them has gone on to the rates.
But the vale of Evesham is still more interesting. Suffice it to say, that while in most rural parishes the population is decreasing, it rose in the six parishes of the Evesham Union from 7,327 to 9,012 in the ten years, 1891 to 1901.
Although the soil of this district offers nothing extraordinary, and the conditions of sale are as bad as anywhere, owing to the importance acquired by the middlemen, we see that an extremely important industry of fruit-growing has developed; so important that in the year 1900 about 20,000 tons of fruit and vegetables were sent from the Evesham stations, in addition to large quantities exported from the small stations within a radius of ten miles round Evesham (vol. i., p. 350). The soil, of course, is improved by digging into it large quantities of all sorts of manure—soot, fish guano, leather dust for cabbage (chamois dust being the best), and so on—and the most profitable sorts of fruit-trees and vegetables are continually tested; all this being, of course, not the work of some scientist or of one single man, but the product of the collective experience of the district.
It must not be thought, however, that fruit-growing has been overdone. On the contrary, the imports of fruit into the United Kingdom, both for food and for jam-making, continue to be enormous, and to increase every year. Suffice it to say, that this country imports every year about £1,000,000 of tomatoes and £2,000,000 of apples, half a million worth of pears, nearly £730,000 worth of grapes—giving thus a total of £4,200,000 worth of all fruit. And at the same time we learn that immense quantities of land go every year out of culture, to be transformed into game reserves for rich Englishmen and foreigners.
Finally, I also ought to mention the recent development of fruit culture near the Broads of Norfolk, and especially in Ireland; but the examples just given will do to show what is obtained from the land in England where no obstacle is laid to the development of horticulture, and what amount of food can be obtained in the climate and from the soil of this country whenever it is properly cultivated. Let me only add that a similar development of fruit culture has taken place within the last thirty years everywhere in the civilised countries; and that in France, in Belgium, and in Germany the extension taken by horticulture during the last twenty or thirty years has been much greater than in this country.[122]
As regards market-gardening, it has undoubtedly made remarkable progress in the United Kingdom within recent years. However, accurate data are failing, and those who have travelled over this country with the special purpose of studying its agriculture have not yet given sufficient attention to the recent developments of market-gardening; but it is quite certain that within the last five-and-twenty years it has taken a great development, especially in Ireland, but also in several parts of England, Scotland, and Wales.