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How is it, then, that our English dairy farmers complain that they make no profits and are beaten by foreign competition, when a country like Holland, with higher rents and lower prices, paying much the same wages to their labourers, and having to contend with a more rigorous climate, can succeed?

or not.

There is, we are afraid, no doubt that from want of combination, and slowness of action, English dairy farmers in many districts are being beaten. Many run in the old grooves and grow more slipshod and inattentive to their business than ever. Their idea seems to be how they are to make a profit with the least possible trouble to themselves. Milk-selling is their beau idéal of happiness. If they can only get a good contract for their milk they rest content and are happy, quite oblivious as to whether the fertility of their farms is maintained If markets go against them, their first impulse is to run to their landlord for a further reduction of rent, or cry to Government to give them a dole of some kind or other. They affect to despise factories or other methods of cheap production; technical and secondary education they regard with apathy; while light railways they laugh at. Their only idea of combination is one to bring pressure upon Parliament to help them in some pecuniary form or other, though they will attend any number of meetings to hear speeches on protection or bimetallism.

Our farmers by their own indolence often make markets for foreigners. In the great cheese-producing grounds of Wiltshire, Dorsetshire, and Somersetshire the feeding and fattening of pigs from dairy refuse, combined with barley meal, has formed in the past, and still forms, a great source of profit to the dairy farmer. Wiltshire bacon is proverbial for its excellence, and there are factories there, containing every modern appliance and most elaborate machinery, capable of killing and curing several thousand pigs weekly.

The companies who own these factories, which have the effect of giving immediate market to the farmers for their fat pigs at good prices, have impressed upon them the necessity of producing a pig which in shape, size, and quality shall defy competition. Yet our farmers have done very little to improve their breeds, and have allowed Denmark and Canada, two large dairy countries, to produce a breed of pigs which in shape, size, and profitableness, though not in quality, is superior to their own, and from which an article is produced which has certainly affected this branch of industry.

In Denmark fifteen years ago the bacon industry was practically unknown; the pigs there were gaunt creatures of prehistoric type, quite unsuited to the English market; yet in a few years these enterprising Danes have, by careful attention to breeding and feeding, produced a pig which, from a bacon-curer's point of view, is perfect in shape and most profitable to deal with. Though for various reasons they can never hope to produce such a fine quality of meat as our

English-fed swine furnish, they have produced in an incredibly short space of time a formidable competitor; moreover the percentage of soft or inferior pigs, arising from careless and improper feeding, is in Denmark not more than 4 or 5 per cent., while in England it is often 10 to 15. If the West-country English farmer had paid more attention to the breeding and feeding of his swine, he might have prevented Denmark from obtaining the strong hold on the English market which she has at the present time.

It is the same with butter.

Our farmers do not seem to realise that what the large centres of England want is an article of good uniform quality which they can rely on getting all the year round. The big provision merchants in London and elsewhere have given up English butter in despair, and now get their supply almost entirely from abroad.

There is a large agricultural district in England where the price of butter is ruled by the price quoted from a market in which not fifty pounds of butter are sold weekly; and it is a fact that the farmers of this district, merely because they will not combine to produce uniformity of quality and steadiness of price, are receiving twopence per pound less than two factories not ten miles away.

We do not mean to say that all British farmers are such as are above described; we should be very sorry to think such was the case. There are many excellent farmers still existent in England-men of energy, thought, enterprise, and intelligence; but unfortunately they are in a minority, and have not yet been able to carry their feebler brethren with them.

It must also be admitted that some individual dairies are capable of turning out an article of such superlative excellence that it cannot be matched by any factory make; for instance, it is possible for very skilled dairy hands on some farms to make a Cheshire or Cheddar cheese of that silky, flaky quality so much prized by experts. Of such quality as this there is very little made, and it is doubtful whether a factory which has to mix its milk will ever be able to turn it out, though factories can produce a uniform article of first-rate quality which can be depended on, and which is better than the usual product of farmhouses.

If any skilled dairyman possesses or rents a farm on which he can produce goods as above mentioned, he does well to stay at home and devote his labours to his own ground; but the majority of English farmers would do well to brush the cobwebs from their eyes, and, while observing what is done in other countries, look forward to an intelligent adaptation of our great industry to its new surroundings.

After what we have heard and seen in other countries, it seems that to argue that agriculture is a ruined industry and can never recover is misleading.

In comparing Dutch and English dairy farming, one of the most

striking lessons is that while the Dutch farmer endeavours to increase the fertility of the soil which he cultivates by using all his waste products of dairy manufacturing, such as separated milk, skim milk, buttermilk, and whey, in rearing and feeding additional stock, the Englishman in similar circumstances attaches, alas! little importance to the serious loss entailed by the depreciation of his farm in sending all products away.

This latter constantly treats it as a hardship, should he deal with a cheese or butter factory, to be asked to take back separated milk, whey, or any other dairy waste, so sought after and reckoned valuable in Holland. In consequence his calves are sold within the first week or two of their birth-to be, perhaps, purchased back in an adult stage. Few or no pigs are fed, or, if so, often on artificial feeding stuffs of an inferior quality. An insufficient amount of manure is made, and that only from his milch cows, and as a natural result his pastures become impoverished.

It is then that the tenant comes to his landlord to complain that the farm is not what it used to be, and will not carry the same amount of stock. This complaint is the basis for a further demand for assistance from the landlord; and so year by year we see in certain districts the English dairy farmer drifting into a dependent system, which means ruin to himself and loss of interest to his landlord on his original outlay, instead of, after the manner of the Hollander and the Dane, laying himself out with all his energies to produce economically a larger and better supply of those commodities for which there is a demand actually at his own door.

The system of milk-selling has largely contributed to the present state of affairs. The dairy farmers have not been in the past forced to prevent the intrusion of foreign competition, which has practically taken their entire trade in milk products. It is now acknowledged that milk-selling under its present conditions and organisation is largely overdone, in consequence of so many arable farmers having taken to this industry, and is subject to many hindrances and vexations. On the other hand 34d. to 4d. appears to be the ruling price for milk in Continental countries which compete with us in butter and cheese. English factories cannot, therefore, afford to pay much more and succeed. If, therefore, the English farmer is dissatisfied with 6d. a gallon, which he gets by selling his milk in towns, how can he be expected to be satisfied with the prices offered by factories?

We do not say that it is impossible for pasture farmers to sell off all their milk and yet keep their land in good heart, for this can be done by heavy expenditure in purchased feeding stuffs and, what is now sadly uncommon, thorough and conscientious manuring; nor would our strictures apply to this type of farmer.2 The energetic,

2 An instance has come before the notice of the writers of a dairy farm taken in hand seven years ago by a wealthy and energetic landowner. The farm was in an

liberal-minded business man is, however, still handicapped by the want of a more complete and scientific knowledge in the art of production and combination, such as we see outside this country, and which during the last few years has enabled the Dutchman, Dane, and Swede to openly take our trade away from us, though the cost of production has been much the same.

It is now, however, a matter of necessity for the pasture farmers to endeavour to make up lost ground. In the fierce competition of the present day they have got behindhand and are lagging in the race. Indiscriminate reductions of rent by large and rich landlords have rather tended to pauperise them than help them. They must have patience, and endeavour to educate themselves and their children into better business habits and methods, and take lessons from some of our foreign neighbours, many of which are afforded by the practical inhabitants of the little country which has mainly been the subject of this paper.

H. HERBERT SMITH.

ERNEST C. TREPPLIX.

impoverished condition, and carried a herd of thirty-five cows. It has been highly manured and subjected to the very best treatment. It now carries seventy cows and cuts large crops of hay. It claims to show that during the seven years it has paid the old rent fixed in 1870, interest at 5 per cent. on capital, and has made in addition a very considerable profit. The whole of the milk has been sold off the farm since it was taken in hand.

1896

LORD LEIGHTON'S DRAWINGS

THE late Lord Leighton's work has been for more than forty years before the world. Since his first great picture of Cimabue's Madonna was exhibited in the Royal Academy he was almost every year a contributor to the great show at Burlington House. His position as an artist has been so freely discussed, admirers and detractors have so long been ranged in opposite camps, that one might suppose that there was nothing new to be said about him; yet, strange as it may seem, except for a few reproductions in Mr. Ernest Rhys's book and elsewhere, the most characteristic part of his work, and, as many will think, the best, remains quite unknown to the general public.

He left behind him a vast number of drawings of exquisite beauty, which will be exhibited in the course of the coming winter, and which will, one may venture to think, attract considerable attention and admiration. They amount to a record of his life and a statement of his artistic creed.

Painters may be divided into two classes, viz. those who seek pre-eminently for pictorial effect of light or colour and those who look first for beauty of form and composition-in other words, those who seek to make a beautiful representation of an object and those who seek to make a representation of a beautiful object. The divergence of the two may not appear great at first sight, but it leads to astonishingly different results. Correggio, the Venetians, and Rembrandt are typical representatives of the first (Sir Joshua was contented with any sitter so long as he had a high light on his nose'), the Florentines, the Romans, and Mantegna of the second. Leighton's sympathies were with the latter. That he could see effect and loved colour is made sufficiently clear in his pictures and still more in his sketches, but his real affections were given to form.

One saw it in his method of designing. He began not, as most painters do nowadays, with a sketch of an effect of light or colour, but with an outline. Of late years he used generally to talk to, or, as he was pleased to say, consult, a friend before beginning a picture, and what he would show was a small outline, two or three inches high at the utmost, enclosed in bounding lines as a frame. Whole pages of small designs such as these, in which the germs of his best known 809 3 H

VOL. XL-No. 237

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