uch a calculation!
for overtime and night-work make up far more than this deficient
quarter; and therefore it may safely be said that man works the
whole year through, and has no bare fallow. But earth--idle
earth--on which man dwells, has a much easier time of it. It takes
nearly a third of the year out in downright leisure, doing nothing
but inchoating; a slow process indeed, and one which all the
agricultural army have of late tried to hasten, with very
indifferent success. Winter seed sown in the fall of the year does
not come to anything till the spring; spring seed is not reaped till
the autumn is at hand. But it will be argued that this land is not
idle, for during those months the seed is slowly growing--absorbing
its constituent parts from the atmosphere, the earth, the water;
going through astonishing metamorphoses; outdoing the most wonderful
laboratory experiments with its untaught, instinctive chemistry. All
true enough; and hitherto it has been assumed that the ultimate
product of these idle months is sufficient to repay the idleness;
that in the _coup_ of the week of reaping there is a dividend
recompensing the long, long days of development. Is it really so?
This is not altogether a question which a practical man used to City
formulas of profit and loss might ask. It is a question to which,
even at this hour, farmers themselves--most unpractical of men--are
requiring an answer. There is a cry arising throughout the country
that farms do not pay; that a man with a moderate 400 acres and a
moderate L1,000 of his own, with borrowed money added, cannot get a
reasonable remuneration from those acres. These say they would
sooner be hotel-keepers, tailors, grocers--anything but farmers.
These are men who have tried the task of subduing the stubborn
earth, which is no longer bountiful to her children. Much reason
exists in this cry, which is heard at the market ordinary, in the
lobby, at the club meetings--wherever agriculturists congregate, and
which will soon force itself out upon the public. It is like this.
Rents have risen. Five shillings per acre makes an enormous
difference, though nominally only an additional L100 on 400 acres.
But as in agricultural profits one must not reckon more than 8 per
cent., this 5s. per acre represents nearly another L1,000 which
must be invested in the business, and which must be made to return
interest to pay the additional rent. If that cannot be done, then it
represents a