Here, again, is a delightful extract from a sporting paper, October 6, 1909:
“Rearing of pheasants is a very costly matter, and one which I anticipate will be seriously curtailed in the near future if this so-called ‘Working Man’s Budget’ is passed. County gentlemen will be very hardly hit if this iniquitous Bill becomes law, and they will consequently have to effect economies in every direction. One of the very first will be in reducing their shootings, or in giving up rearing birds altogether. Pheasants which are hand-reared cost about 4s. each to feed, from start to finish. Thus it is easy to understand what sums of money find their way into farmers’ and tradesmen’s pockets for the purchase of food alone, for hundreds of thousands of pheasants all over the kingdom have to be fed for months every year. The money which is expended one way or another over shooting is quite enormous, for it must be remembered that, in addition to the purchase of eggs and food, there are wages, clothes, and fuel for keepers; there are also endless expenses in connection with rearing. When the shooting commences, there are beaters at 2s. 6d. and 3s. per day, with meat, bread, cheese, and beer. And there is the expense of hospitality to guests. Take it all in all, the old saying that each pheasant shot costs, one way and another, a guinea, is not far wrong.
“Now, who benefits from all this? The poor owner certainly does not, for it is all pay, pay, pay with him, and if he does sell his surplus birds, he will only get back 2s. to 2s. 6d. a bird. But the public gets the benefit, for they can purchase these costly-reared birds for the price of chickens. One day those people, the farmers, tradesmen, working-classes, and labourers, will wake up to what they have lost, when they find the country house shut up, and shooting, as it used to be, a thing of the past.”
No doubt all these crumbs of blessing fall from the rich man’s pocket on the happy gamekeepers, beaters, and others who are employed by a shooting-party. No doubt the country lads, servants, and porters rejoice in the tips they receive. Much money is spent on sport, and a great deal of it finds its way as wages and gratuities into the pockets of dependents, but to contend seriously that sport checks depopulation is ludicrous. It is an insult to our intelligence to argue that the country is more prosperous and supports a larger population when the land is portioned out in great estates, many of which are only farmed to the degree necessary to keep the game on the land; when the people are driven from the country-side into the town; when in Scotland whole counties have been cleared of inhabitants in order to form vast deer forests for the sport of a few rich men.
The Reality.
Of the 56,000,000 acres in Great Britain something less than 15,000,000 are actually cultivated, although there are 35,000,000 acres of cultivable land. Thirty years ago there were more than 2,000,000 agricultural labourers in Great Britain, but in 1907 they had decreased to 1,311,000. In the same year there were more than 17,000,000 acres of pasture. In “Fields, Factories, and Workshops,” Prince Kropotkin estimates that the soil of the United Kingdom would produce enough food for 24,000,000 people, instead of for only 17,000,000 as at present, if it were cultivated as thoroughly as it was only thirty-five years ago, while if it were cultivated as thoroughly as Belgium it would produce enough to feed 37,000,000.
Take, again, the question of Afforestation. The Report of the Royal Commission, issued on January 15, 1909, is a most important paper in many ways. Of special interest are the references made by the Commissioners to the responsibility of blood-sports for much of the bad condition of our woodlands.
“Considerations of sport have played an important part in determining the method of management of our woods. Clean boles, with high-pitched crowns, the exclusion of the sun’s rays, and ground destitute of grass, weeds, and bushes, are not conditions favourable to either ground or winged game. On the contrary, trees that are semi-isolated, and with low-reaching branches, and a wood that is full of bracken, brambles, and similar undergrowth, present conditions much more attractive to the sportsman, and it is these conditions that many landowners have arranged to secure. Ground game, too, has been the cause of immense destruction amongst the young trees, and thus it has, in a measure, directly brought about that condition of under-stocking which is so inimical to the growth of good timber and to the successful results of forestry. Nor is it possible in the presence of even a moderate head of ground game to secure natural regeneration of woodlands, the young seedling trees being nibbled over almost as soon as they appear above ground. So intimate is the association in the United Kingdom between sport and forestry that even on an estate that is considered to possess some of the best-managed woods in England, the sylvicultural details have to be accommodated to the hunting and shooting, and trees must be taken down in different places to make cover for foxes, and so on.”
If, then, the land of our country, instead of lying almost idle or in permanent pasture interspersed with parks and copses as cover for game, or left desolate as moor and deer forest, were covered with the small farms of prosperous peasants, like Belgium or Denmark, and the more rugged and uncultivable districts turned into national forests giving regular and healthy employment to large numbers of men, would not far better results be obtained, even from the purely economic point of view? Now we have a few gamekeepers and beaters, a few grooms, jockeys, stablemen, and horse-dealers, and other dependents of the sportsmen, and a few farmers, breeding horses and growing fodder for them, while the labourers are turned out of their native village for want of work and house-room, and drift into the already overcrowded and hideous towns which daily absorb more and more of the country, or are even forced to leave their native land altogether and seek a livelihood in lands beyond the sea, free, as yet, from the blessings of sport; then we should have some millions of free men earning an honest living in healthful surroundings, and producing a thousandfold more wealth for themselves than is distributed by the aristocrats and plutocrats, who, according to the protagonist of the Sporting League, so fully “carry out the principles of Communism.”