THE PUBLIC INTEREST IN

AGRICULTURAL REFORM.

I.

In this article the word 'interest' will be used in two senses, distinct though cognate; the first expressive of concern felt, and the second of advantage pertaining. No confusion will arise from this inevitable use of the term in two of its meanings, both of which I desire to deal with, as the context will clearly show which is intended, even if, as is not likely, both have to be used in the same paragraph. It is my object to call attention to the fact that the public have a very great interest in agricultural reform, although they apparently feel so little interest in that important subject.

First, then, as to the concern which the public feel in agricultural reform. This, I take it, may be fairly measured by the concern which they manifest. Let us test this in a few different ways.

The press in this country is usually acknowledged to give a fair indication of the degree of interest attaching to important questions in the mind of the public. Newspapers are published to sell, and their editors supply such reading matter as is believed to be most acceptable to the people who buy newspapers. Our great daily journals, metropolitan and provincial, are conducted with much energy, and no expense is spared by their proprietors in catering for public favour. The London dailies alone are sold by hundreds of thousands, and circulate in all parts of the country,. including the most secluded rural districts. In some districts the provincial daily journals may have a larger circulation than their London rivals; but this is a consideration of no importance to the point which I am endeavouring to make clear, as no one will deny that the London daily papers circulate extensively in town and country, and amongst all classes of the people. What, then, do we gather as to the public interest in agricultural affairs from the extent to which those matters are noticed in the London daily papers? In reply it would be almost sufficient to give one illustration. More space is occupied in the pages of the great morning journals, with one exception, during the preparation for, and immediately after, the VOL. V.-No. 28.

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Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, in allusion to that one event, than is allotted during the whole year to agriculture in all its branches but that of market reports, which must be left out of the estimate. Probably this year will be an exception, as the seriously depressed condition of agriculture as a business has forced itself upon public attention, and the coming International Agricultural Show at Kilburn will also have occupied a great deal of newspaper space before it has ceased to be a subject for comment. If it were worth while to test the correctness of my estimate by a measurement of the columns of last year's London morning papers, with the exception of the Daily Chronicle, which devotes a column weekly to agricultural notes, I feel confident that it would hold good. And this proportion of press notice approximates, I fear, to the regard which the people at large pay to the two subjects respectively. The contest between eight young men from Oxford and eight from Cambridge probably does engage the attention of a larger number of people than the finest agriculture in the world does.

Again, accounts of the crimes and intrigues of the murderer Peace occupied more space in the metropolitan press than has ever been devoted to any single agricultural question in a single year since the great fight between Free Trade and Protection took place; while the trial of the impostor Orton probably employed the London compositors for more hours than they have been occupied in setting up agricultural 'copy' from that time to this. If we apply the same test to any two public events, the one agricultural and the other non-agricultural, the result will be equally decisive. Thus, a petty suburban race-a mere bookmakers' meeting-will have two or three columns devoted to it; when a meeting of the Farmers' Club or Central Chamber of Agriculture, at which important topics of agricultural economy or politics have been discussed, will be dismissed in a few lines of small type, or perhaps without any mention whatever.

Nor is this all, for agricultural topics appear to be considered of so little importance by the editors of London daily papers, that when they deign to bestow a leading article upon one of those subjects it commonly betrays more or less ignorance of the subject on the part of the writer, thus showing that specialists are not usually employed to deal with these as they are to deal with other subjects requiring special information.

Provincial daily and weekly journals of course give more attention to agricultural affairs, as many of them circulate chiefly amongst country readers; but only a few contain regular original contributions on agricultural topics, though, as some of these are so well served in this respect as greatly to enhance their attractiveness to country subscribers, one wonders that their example is not more generally followed. In Ireland the land question is so much the question of the country that it is always a prominent subject of comment

in the newspapers. In Scotland more attention is given by journalists to agriculture than in England, though less than in Ireland; and the proportion is natural, considering the comparative preponderance of agricultural pursuits in the three countries respectively. The preceding remarks, however, refer to the attention given by the press to agriculture in all its branches, whereas the special question before us is the interest manifested in agricultural reform. If, then, on the whole, we come to the conclusion that agricultural affairs receive less attention from journalists than the intrinsic importance of the greatest of all our national industries demands, it follows that agricultural reform, which embraces the whole field of agricultural development, and is therefore the particular department of agricultural economy which most concerns the public at large, is seriously neglected by the Press. As to the purely agricultural journals, although they are probably read at the present time by a larger number of public men than at any previous period of their existence, they cannot be said to circulate at all widely beyond the circle of those who are directly interested in the land, or in the first-hand purchase and sale of its products. So far, then, as the test applied to the Press of England, at least, affords an indication of the degree of public interest felt in agricultural reform, the inevitable conclusion is that it is very small, although I am glad to notice signs of its increase.

If we turn to Parliament, a similar phenomenon confronts us. Apparently there is no political question which members are so unwilling to deal with, unless it be Indian finances, as any question of agricultural reform. When any such question is approached it is only under a feeling of imperative necessity, and even then the appearance of the benches is not such as to indicate a proper sense of the importance of the subject under discussion. The most paltry personal squabble in the House will bring twice as many members to their places as are attracted by a question involving the most important considerations in relation to the produce of our soil. In the recent division on Mr. Samuelson's important motion for a committee to inquire into the operation of the Agricultural Holdings Act and the conditions of agricultural tenancies in England and Wales, only 281 members voted, although whips' were issued on both sides; and when the Hypothec Abolition Bill-a measure relating to the leading grievance of Scotch farmers, agitated by them for many years past-was passing through committee in the House of Commons, it was with difficulty that a 'House' could be kept, and only seventythree votes were numbered in the division list.

Still more astonishing deductions are to be gathered from an examination of the printed addresses and public speeches of candidates at Parliamentary elections. Nothing is more common than for a gentleman to go down to a provincial constituency-of which

perhaps a fourth of the voters are connected with farming, as owners, tenants, or labourers, while a large proportion of the rest are materially concerned in the prosperity of the agriculture of their district— issue an address, make a number of speeches, and get elected as a Parliamentary representative without once mentioning any topic of agricultural politics. Even at county elections such subjects are avoided as far as is possible. For example, the recently elected member for North Norfolk secured his seat without definitely pledging himself to deal with any important agricultural grievance, the foreign policy of the Government having been made the test question of the election. A similar result occurred at the still more recent election in Cambridgeshire. No doubt in these cases, and in others like them, it is the farmers themselves who have been most to blame, and it may fairly be asked how it can be expected that the public generally should manifest a warm interest in agricultural reform when those most concerned in it are apparently so indifferent. It has been urged in defence of the farmers that they were quite right to prove themselves to be patriots first and agriculturists afterwards. This may be true; but it does not meet the complaint in the instances referred to, which is, that the farmers were not, in their political capacity, agriculturists at all. Besides this, it is to be borne in mind that agricultural abuses are very flagrant; that they have been persistently neglected or only inefficiently dealt with in spite of the most widely-expressed dissatisfaction; that the present condition of British agriculture is so serious as to lead to the fear of the general ruin of those who get their living by farming; and lastly, that the removal of agricultural abuses is so much a national question as to render our almost exclusive attention to their reform at the present juncture consistent with the widest and most enlightened patriotism. In reality, however, the way in which English farmers vote is not a fair indication of their interest in agricultural reform. They have been so long under the influence of their landlords that they have not yet learned to associate their grievances with their votes at all generally. In Scotland and Ireland political independence has made much greater progress amongst the farmers, and there are signs of its spread amongst their English brethren. These considerations do not directly concern us now. Whatever may be the cause of the comparative indifference shown in relation to agricultural politics in English county constituencies, the fact that the subject attracts a very insufficient amount of attention at elections throughout the country remains, and it is a sign of a serious lack of interest in agricultural reform on the part of the public at large.

If a general election were to be held to-morrow, it is probable that the question whether dead people are to be buried in churchyards with or without certain religious forms would have more influence upon the result in England and Wales than the whole range

of questions that have to do with the economy of feeding the living.

Further illustrations might be cited, but they are needless. Those given above are sufficient to justify me in declaring that if the English people were in reality the 'nation of shopkeepers' which they have been styled, they could scarcely manifest a more deplorable indifference with respect to questions materially affecting the prosperity of what, after all, is by far the most important of our industries. How is this indifference to be accounted for? Partly, I believe, by the neglect of these questions by the Press, that neglect being a cause as well as a sign of the public indifference; and partly by a similar neglect by our public men. The Press and our leading politicians form public opinion quite as much as they are led by it, notwithstanding what is often said to the contrary. Through the efforts of journalists and public speakers the views of a small minority become, sometimes with wearisome slowness, and sometimes with startling quickness, the views of a majority of the nation. Unfortunately, journalists generally, and public men, with the exception of landowners, do not understand agricultural grievances thoroughly enough to deal with them effectually. The landlords understand them well enough, but they have thought it to their advantage, as it has certainly been their policy, to keep such subjects as much in the background as possible. Some popular agitators, who have taken up what they have called the 'Land Question,' have done more harm than good, as their proposals have been both unfair and impracticable, and their wild schemes have simply scared moderate and thoughtful men from the attention which they might otherwise have given to the subject. As for the farmers, up to a comparatively recent period there were but few of them either independent enough or educated enough to be public teachers upon questions of agricultural reform. Of late years the Chambers of Agriculture have afforded able and courageous tenant-farmers opportunities of educating the public by means of speeches which have been reported in the country papers, and in this way some progress has been made. Unfortunately, however, the Chambers of Agriculture have been too much under landlords' influence, so that free speech and free voting in them have been lamentably trammelled. On the other hand, the landlords and their sycophants in the Chambers have put their side of the case with perfect freedom, and thus the public have been nearly as often misled as enlightened by the reports of the meetings; not quite as often, I think, partly because the independent tenants have usually had the best of the argument, and partly because there are some liberal-minded landlords who have been more or less on the same side. It is much to be regretted that the discussions of the London Farmers' Club, the most truly representative and independent body of farmers in England, should be so imperfectly reported in the