The question should be answered with due regard to all the considerations as to agriculture, housing and the distribution of population and industries which have been advanced in these pages. The problem of the town is before us, and not alone the question of the tilling of the soil. It should also be answered with due regard to the question of food importation and the probabilities as to the continuance of cheap supplies.
In 1875-6 the gross assessments of agricultural lands—an area very little larger than at present, for, as has been shown, the largest town occupies a relatively insignificant area—amounted to £67,000,000 or £15,000,000 more than at the present time. If we had bought in 1875, then, and rents had remained the same, we should have lost capital, but would the value of the land have remained the same? In thirty years we could have created a considerable yeomanry,—men holding land from the State not in fee simple, but nevertheless in absolute security of tenure. They could have paid us rentals at which small holdings would be eagerly competed for, yet rentals larger than are at present derived by the little sovereigns of the British country-side from their tenants. Further, we should have stemmed the current of humanity which for thirty years has flowed to the towns, and done something, in the phrase of Ruskin, to "get as much territory as the nation has, well filled with respectable persons."
My point as to the value that is and the value that might be is illustrated by Sir Robert Edgcumbe's experiment with Rew Farm, in the parish of Winterbourne St Martin, in Dorsetshire. Sir Robert bought this farm of 343 acres for £5,050, made a road through it, and sold it in small holdings at prices ranging from £7 to £20 per acre. The land was eagerly taken up and the experiment has been a great success. When Sir Robert bought the land in 1888 the outgoing tenant was in financial straits—he could not make Rew Farm pay. It was rented at £240 per annum and its net rateable value was £215. It is improbable that a new tenant would have paid more than £200. Yet, under small cultivation, the rateable value of Rew Farm rose from the £215 of 1888 to £346 in 1902, a rise of 60 per cent. In the same period, the rateable value of the parish of Winterbourne St Martin as a whole fell from £2,807 to £2,073.
Apart from the question of small holdings, nothing is more probable than a rise in the value of British agricultural land to a point far beyond any yet attained. Already, within the last few years, a revolution has taken place in our wheat supplies—a revolution which has gone unnoticed by the British public, so long accustomed to its miraculous cheap loaf in the baker's shop that the miracle has become, as is the fate of all miracles, a commonplace and unregarded thing. The table on p. 245 shows the nature of the change which has occurred:
UNITED KINGDOM IMPORTS OF WHEAT
AND FLOUR IN EQUIVALENT WEIGHT OF GRAIN
In Millions of Cwts.
| 1895. | 1896. | 1897. | 1898. | 1899. | 1900. | |
| Russia | 23.0 | 17.2 | 15.1 | 6.4 | 2.5 | 4.5 |
| Roumania | 2.0 | 5.4 | 1.2 | 0.2 | — | 0.7 |
| U.S.A. | 45.3 | 52.8 | 54.1 | 62.0 | 60.2 | 57.4 |
| Argentina | 11.4 | 5.0 | 0.9 | 4.0 | 11.5 | 18.7 |
| Canada | 5.1 | 6.3 | 6.9 | 7.7 | 8.7 | 8.0 |
| India | 8.8 | 2.1 | 0.6 | 9.5 | 8.2 | — |
| Australia | 3.6 | — | — | 0.2 | 3.0 | 2.9 |
| Total of above and other countries | 107.2 | 99.6 | 88.7 | 94.4 | 98.5 | 98.6 |
| 1901. | 1902. | 1903. | 1904. | 1905. | 1908. | |
| Russia | 2.6 | 6.6 | 17.3 | 23.7 | 24.8 | 4.6 |
| Roumania | 0.5 | 2.4 | 3.1 | 1.5 | 2.1 | 1.8 |
| U.S.A. | 66.8 | 65.0 | 46.7 | 18.5 | 14.5 | 40.7 |
| Argentina | 8.3 | 4.5 | 14.2 | 21.8 | 24.1 | 31.8 |
| Canada | 8.6 | 12.2 | 14.5 | 9.0 | 8.4 | 16.8 |
| India | 3.3 | 8.8 | 17.1 | 25.5 | 22.9 | 2.9 |
| Australia | 6.2 | 4.2 | — | 11.4 | 11.5 | 5.8 |
| Total of above and other countries | 101.0 | 107.9 | 116.7 | 118.2 | 114.2 | 109.1 |
In 1902 America sent us 65,000,000 cwts. of wheat. In 1903 this great supply fell sharply and in 1904-5 it was reduced to less than 20,000,000 cwts. In 1908 there was recovery, but this was but temporary. Sooner or later the United States supply will wholly cease. By 1925 the United States will have some 110,000,000 to 120,000,000 people to feed.