[120] Rural England, 2 vols., London (Longmans, Green), 1902, vol. ii., p. 57.
[121] F. E. Green, The Awakening of England, London (Nelson’s), 1911, pp. 49, 50. Speaking of a certain farmer, Mr. Green says: “In the autumn of 1910, when I visited him, he was offered £100 an acre for his standing crops, and £100 for the tenant rights. He refused the offer. His rent still stands at £2 an acre.”
[122] According to the researches made by the French Ministry of Agriculture, the yearly produce of the French horticulturists attains the value of £16,000,000.
[123] Rural England, ii., pp. 76, 212. Spalding, also in Lincolnshire, is another centre for the trade in spring flowers, as well as for intensive farming, co-operative small-holding having been introduced there by the Provident and Small-Holdings Club (same work, ii., pp. 238-240). More than 1,000 acres are now given to the growing of flowers—an industry which was introduced only fifteen years ago, when it came from Holland. On p. 242 of the same work the reader will find some interesting information about a new “mutualist” venture, the Lincoln Equitable Co-operative Society.
[124] Rural England, ii., 59.
[125] F. E. Green, The Awakening of England, pp. 116, 117.
[126] The imports of fruit and vegetables, fresh and preserved, were £12,900,000 in 1909, and £14,193,000 in 1911, out of which fruit alone must have figured for at least £4,000,000. Potatoes alone, imported and retained for home consumption in the United Kingdom, figure in this item for the sums of from £6,908,550 in 1908 to £3,314,200 in 1910. The industry of dried fruit, and especially of dried vegetables, has not yet developed in this country, the result being that during the Boer War Britain paid a weekly tribute to Germany for dried vegetables, which attained many thousands of pounds every week. A nation cannot let its land be transformed into hunting reserves at the rate it is being done in this country without having to send the best and the most enterprising portion of its population overseas, and without relying for its daily food upon its neighbours and commercial rivals.
[127] Thomas Smith, French Gardening, London (Utopia Press), 1909, 128 pp.; Profitable Culture of Vegetables, for Market Gardeners, Small Holders, and Others, London (Longmans, Green), 1911, 452 pp.; and a short summing up of the first of these works.
[128] See [Appendix T].