Down in Essex wages are regarded as generally good by the farm labourers. At least there is a distinct tendency on the part of the men to remain on the soil. Horsemen receive 14s. a week, cowmen 14s. and 15s., the head cowmen getting generally 18s. and 20s., while other farm hands earn from 13s. to 15s. Living is very cheap, and rents are low. A good, comfortable cottage, with a decent bit of garden, where vegetables can be grown, can be had for £4 or £5 a year. Should a man require more ground he can get it at a nominal annual rent of 3d. per rod—that is, a piece of ground measuring 5½ yards each way. Quite a number of men avail themselves of this offer, and as they knock off work at five p.m., they put in their evenings on their own "estate."
It is true that Lord Rayleigh has only tried his new system of investment, as well as interest in the farms, for a year, but the results amply justify the experiment. So satisfied are the men themselves that many have asked to be allowed to invest their share of the interest earned and their new bonuses in the estate. It would seem that here, at least, is a possible project for checking the ever-increasing rush of young men to the towns, where, while wages may be higher, the conditions are not conducive to either personal or patriotic well-being. The great feature of Lord Rayleigh's plan is that it is a distinctly profit-sharing one, for no reform, however attractive, can be economically good unless it is financially sound.
With wheat in a rising market at 50s. a quarter, the granaries of the world holding back supplies a considerable proportion of which are already cornered in America—and bread dearer than it has been for many years, the question of the moment is, Can England become her own wheat grower?
Fourteen weeks after harvest the home supplies are exhausted. Britain needs altogether, both home and foreign, 30,000,000 quarters of wheat per annum to provide her people with bread. Out of the total area of 32,000,000 acres under crops of all sorts in the country only 1,625,000 acres are devoted to the growth of wheat. English climatic conditions can be relied upon to allow an average production of three and a half quarters per acre.
The solution of the problem, therefore, is simplicity itself. A matter of 8,000,000 acres taken from those devoted meantime to other crops, to pasturage (to say nothing of deer forests, grouse moors, golf links), or even lying waste, and developed for wheat growing would produce, roughly speaking, the extra 28,000,000 necessary to our annual national food supply.
Millions of acres of the land at present in other crops has grown wheat at a profit in the past. In the sixties and seventies the staple commodity was at its most remunerative price. In 1867 it touched the enormous average of 64s. 5d. per quarter, while later, in 1871 and 1873, it stood at 56s. 8d. and 58s. 8d. per quarter.
With the countries of the East—India, China, Japan—awakening to the potentialities of wheat as a food in place of rice, with America's prairies becoming used up and her teeming millions multiplying, and with Canada, Australia, and Argentina remaining at a standstill as regards wheat production, it is clear that England ought to become self-sufficing.
To attain the desired end the vast possibilities of the agricultural science of to-day must be appreciated and developed by every possible means.
What can be done within England's own borders is the chief point to be considered, and some experiments and experiences may point the way.
The first question is, would home produced wheat pay? Farmers tell us that at 30s. a quarter wheat is just worth growing, but that each shilling over 30s. means about 5s. clear profit. Would not wheat at 40s. an acre be worth cultivating?