Unequal Agriculture

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Title:     Unequal Agriculture
Author: Richard Jefferies [More Titles by Jefferies]

In the way of sheer, downright force few effects of machinery are more striking than a steam-ploughing engine dragging the shares across a wide expanse of stiff clay. The huge engines used in our ironclad vessels work with a graceful ease which deceives the eye; the ponderous cranks revolve so smoothly, and shine so brightly with oil and polish, that the mind is apt to underrate the work performed. But these ploughing engines stand out solitary and apart from other machinery, and their shape itself suggests crude force, such force as may have existed in the mastodon or other unwieldy monster of the prehistoric ages. The broad wheels sink into the earth under the pressure; the steam hissing from the escape valves is carried by the breeze through the hawthorn hedge, hiding the red berries with a strange, unwonted cloud; the thick dark brown smoke, rising from the funnel as the stoker casts its food of coal into the fiery mouth of the beast, falls again and floats heavily over the yellow stubble, smothering and driving away the partridges and hares. There is a smell of oil, and cotton-waste, and gas, and steam, and smoke, which overcomes the fresh, sweet odour of the earth and green things after a shower. Stray lumps of coal crush the delicate pimpernel and creeping convolvulus. A shrill, short scream rushes forth and echoes back from an adjacent rick--puff! the fly-wheel revolves, and the drum underneath tightens its hold upon the wire rope. Across yonder a curious, shapeless thing, with a man riding upon it, comes jerking forward, tearing its way through stubble and clay, dragging its iron teeth with sheer strength deep through the solid earth. The thick wire rope stretches and strains as if it would snap and curl up like a tortured snake; the engine pants loudly and quick; the plough now glides forward, now pauses, and, as it were, eats its way through a tougher place, then glides again, and presently there is a pause, and behold the long furrow with the upturned subsoil is completed. A brief pause, and back it travels again, this time drawn from the other side, where a twin monster puffs and pants and belches smoke, while the one that has done its work uncoils its metal sinews. When the furrows run up and down a slope, the savage force, the fierce, remorseless energy of the engine pulling the plough upwards, gives an idea of power which cannot but impress the mind.

This is what is going on upon one side of the hedge. These engines cost as much as the fee-simple of a small farm; they consume expensive coal, and water that on the hills has to be brought long distances; they require skilled workmen to attend to them, and they do the work with a thoroughness which leaves little to be desired. Each puff and pant echoing from the ricks, each shrill whistle rolling along from hill to hill, proclaims as loudly as iron and steel can shout, 'Progress! Onwards!' Now step through this gap in the hedge and see what is going on in the next field.

It is a smaller ground, of irregular shape and uneven surface. Steam-ploughs mean plains rather than fields--broad, square expanses of land without awkward corners--and as level as possible, with mounds that may have been tumuli worked down, rising places smoothed away, old ditch-like drains filled up, and fairly good roads. This field may be triangular or some indescribable figure, with narrow corners where the high hedges come close together, with deep furrows to carry away the water, rising here and sinking there into curious hollows, entered by a narrow gateway leading from a muddy lane where the ruts are a foot deep. The plough is at work here also, such a plough as was used when the Corn Laws were in existence, chiefly made of wood--yes, actually wood, in this age of iron--bound and strengthened with metal, but principally made from the tree--the tree which furnishes the African savage at this day with the crooked branch with which to scratch the earth, which furnished the ancient agriculturists of the Nile Valley with their primitive implements. It is drawn by dull, patient oxen, plodding onwards now just as they were depicted upon the tombs and temples, the graves and worshipping places, of races who had their being three thousand years ago. Think of the suns that have shone since then; of the summers and the bronzed grain waving in the wind, of the human teeth that have ground that grain, and are now hidden in the abyss of earth; yet still the oxen plod on, like slow Time itself, here this day in our land of steam and telegraph. Are not these striking pictures, remarkable contrasts? On the one side steam, on the other the oxen of the Egyptians, only a few thorn-bushes between dividing the nineteenth century B.C. from the nineteenth century A.D. After these oxen follows an aged man, slow like themselves, sowing the seed. A basket is at his side, from which at every stride, regular as machinery, he takes a handful of that corn round which so many mysteries have gathered from the time of Ceres to the hallowed words of the great Teacher, taking His parable from the sower. He throws it with a peculiar steady jerk, so to say, and the grains, impelled with the exact force and skill, which can only be attained by long practice, scatter in an even shower. Listen! On the other side of the hedge the rattle of the complicated drill resounds as it drops the seed in regular rows--and, perhaps, manures it at the same time--so that the plants can be easily thinned out, or the weeds removed, after the magical influence of the despised clods has brought on the miracle of vegetation.

These are not extreme and isolated instances; no one will need to walk far afield to witness similar contrasts. There is a medium between the two--a third class--an intermediate agriculture. The pride of this farm is in its horses, its teams of magnificent animals, sleek and glossy of skin, which the carters spend hours in feeding lest they should lose their appetites--more hours than ever they spend in feeding their own children. These noble creatures, whose walk is power and whose step is strength, work a few hours daily, stopping early in the afternoon, taking also an ample margin for lunch. They pull the plough also like the oxen, but it is a modern implement, of iron, light, and with all the latest improvements. It is typical of the system itself--half and half--neither the old oxen nor the new steam, but midway, a compromise. The fields are small and irregular in shape, but the hedges are cut, and the mounds partially grubbed and reduced to the thinnest of banks, the trees thrown, and some draining done. Some improvements have been adopted, others have been omitted.

Upon those broad acres where the steam-plough was at work, what tons of artificial manure, superphosphate, and guano, liquid and solid, have been sown by the progressive tenant! Lavishly and yet judiciously, not once only, but many times, have the fertilizing elements been restored to the soil, and more than restored--added to it, till the earth itself has grown richer and stronger. The scarifier and the deep plough have turned up the subsoil and exposed the hard, stiff under-clods to the crumbling action of the air and the mysterious influence of light. Never before since Nature deposited those earthy atoms there in the slow process of some geological change has the sunshine fallen on them, or their latent power been called forth. Well-made and judiciously laid drains carry away the flow of water from the winter rains and floods--no longer does there remain a species of reservoir at a certain depth, chilling the tender roots of the plants as they strike downwards, lowering the entire temperature of the field. Mounds have been levelled, good roads laid down, nothing left undone that can facilitate operations or aid in the production of strong, succulent vegetation. Large flocks of well-fed sheep, folded on the corn-lands, assist the artificial manure, and perhaps even surpass it. When at last the plant comes to maturity and turns colour under the scorching sun, behold a widespread ocean of wheat, an English gold-field, a veritable Yellow Sea, bowing in waves before the southern breeze--a sight full of peaceful poetry. The stalk is tall and strong, good in colour, fit for all purposes. The ear is full, large; the increase is truly a hundredfold. Or it may be roots. By these means the progressive agriculturist has produced a crop of swedes or mangolds which in individual size and collective weight per acre would seem to an old-fashioned farmer perfectly fabulous. Now, here are many great benefits. First, the tenant himself reaps his reward, and justly adds to his private store. Next, the property of the landlord is improved, and increases in value. The labourer gets better house accommodation, gardens, and higher wages. The country at large is supplied with finer qualities and greater quantities of food, and those who are engaged in trade and manufactures, and even in commerce, feel an increased vitality in their various occupations.

On the other side of the hedge, where the oxen were at plough, the earth is forced to be self-supporting--to restore to itself how it can the elements carried away in wheat and straw and root. Except a few ill-fed sheep, except some small quantities of manure from the cattle-yards, no human aid, so to say, reaches the much-abused soil. A crop of green mustard is sometimes ploughed in to decompose and fertilize, but as it had to be grown first the advantage is doubtful. The one object is to spend as little as possible upon the soil, and to get as much out of it as may be. Granted that in numbers of cases no trickery be practised, that the old rotation of crops is honestly followed, and no evil meant, yet even then, in course of time, a soil just scratched on the surface, never fairly manured, and always in use, must of necessity deteriorate. Then, when such an effect is too patent to be any longer overlooked, when the decline of the produce begins to alarm him, the farmer, perhaps, buys a few hundredweight of artificial manure, and frugally scatters it abroad. This causes 'a flash in the pan'; it acts as a momentary stimulus; it is like endeavouring to repair a worn-out constitution with doses of strong cordial; there springs up a vigorous vegetation one year, and the next the earth is more exhausted than before. Soils cannot be made highly fertile all at once even by superphosphates; it is the inability to discern this fact which leads many to still argue in the face of experience that artificial manures are of no avail. The slow oxen, the lumbering wooden plough, the equally lumbering heavy waggon, the primitive bush-harrow, made simply of a bush cut down and dragged at a horse's tail--these are symbols of a standstill policy utterly at variance with the times. Then this man loudly complains that things are not as they used to be--that wheat is so low in price it will not yield any profit, that labour is so high and everything so dear; and, truly, it is easy to conceive that the present age, with its competition and eagerness to advance, must really press very seriously upon him.

Most persons have been interested enough, however little connected with agriculture, to at least once in their lives walk round an agricultural show, and to express their astonishment at the size and rotundity of the cattle exhibited. How easy, judging from such a passing view of the finest products of the country centred in one spot, to go away with the idea that under every hawthorn hedge a prize bullock of enormous girth is peacefully grazing! Should the same person ever go across country, through gaps and over brooks, taking an Asmodeus-like glance into every field, how marvellously would he find that he had been deceived! He might travel miles, and fly over scores of fields, and find no such animals, nor anything approaching to them. By making inquiries he would perhaps discover in most districts one spot where something of the kind could be seen--an oasis in the midst of a desert. On the farm he would see a long range of handsome outhouses, tiled or slated, with comfortable stalls and every means of removing litter and manure, tanks for liquid manure, skilled attendants busy in feeding, in preparing food, storehouses full of cake. A steam-engine in one of the sheds--perhaps a portable engine, used also for threshing--drives the machinery which slices up or pulps roots, cuts up chaff, pumps up water, and performs a score of other useful functions. The yards are dry, well paved, and clean; everything smells clean; there are no foul heaps of decaying matter breeding loathsome things and fungi; yet nothing is wasted, not even the rain that falls upon the slates and drops from the eaves. The stock within are worthy to compare with those magnificent beasts seen at the show. It is from these places that the prize animals are drawn; it is here that the beef which makes England famous is fattened; it is from here that splendid creatures are sent abroad to America or the Colonies, to improve the breed in those distant countries. Now step forth again over the hedge, down yonder in the meadows.

This is a cow-pen, one of the old-fashioned style; in the dairy and pasture counties you may find them by hundreds still. It is pitched by the side of a tall hedge, or in an angle of two hedges, which themselves form two walls of the enclosure. The third is the cow-house and shedding itself; the fourth is made of willow rods. These rods are placed upright, confined between horizontal poles, and when new this simple contrivance is not wholly to be despised; but when the rods decay, as they do quickly, then gaps are formed, through which the rain and sleet and bitter wind penetrate with ease. Inside this willow paling is a lower hedge, so to say, two feet distant from the other, made of willow work twisted--like a continuous hurdle. Into this rude manger, when the yard is full of cattle, the fodder is thrown. Here and there about the yard, also, stand cumbrous cribs for fodder, at which two cows can feed at once. In one corner there is a small pond, muddy, stagnant, covered with duckweed, perhaps reached by a steep, 'pitched' descent, slippery, and difficult for the cattle to get down. They foul the very water they drink. The cow-house, as it is called, is really merely adapted for one or two cows at a time, at the period of calving--dark, narrow, awkward. The skilling, or open house where the cows lie and chew the cud in winter, is built of boards or slabs at the back, and in front supported upon oaken posts standing on stones. The roof is of thatch, green with moss; in wet weather the water drips steadily from the eaves, making one long gutter. In the eaves the wrens make their nests in the spring, and roost there in winter. The floor here is hard, certainly, and dry; the yard itself is a sea of muck. Never properly stoned or pitched, and without a drain, the loose stones cannot keep the mud down, and it works up under the hoofs of the cattle in a filthy mass. Over this there is litter and manure a foot deep; or, if the fogger does clean up the manure, he leaves it in great heaps scattered about, and on the huge dunghill just outside the yard he will show you a fine crop of mushrooms cunningly hidden under a light layer of litter. It is his boast that the cow-pen was built in the three sevens; on one ancient beam, worm-eaten and cracked, there may perhaps be seen the inscription '1777' cut deep into the wood. Over all, at the back of the cow-pen, stands a row of tall elm-trees, dripping in wet weather upon the thatch, in the autumn showering their yellow leaves into the hay, in a gale dropping dead branches into the yard. The tenant seems to think even this shelter effeminate, and speaks regretfully of the old hardy breed which stood all weathers, and wanted no more cover than was afforded by a hawthorn bush. From here a few calves find their way to the butcher, and towards Christmas one or two moderately fat beasts.

Near by lives a dairy farmer, who, without going to the length of the famous stock-breeder whose stalls are the pride of the district, yet fills his meadows with a handsome herd of productive shorthorns, giving splendid results in butter, milk, and cheese, and who sends to the market a succession of animals which, if not equal to the gigantic prize beasts, are nevertheless valuable to the consumer. This tenant does good work, both for himself and for the labourers, the landlord, and the country. His meadows are a sight in themselves to the experienced eye--well drained, great double mounds thinned out, but the supply of wood not quite destroyed--not a rush, a 'bullpoll,' a thistle, or a 'rattle,' those yellow pests of mowing grass, to be seen. They have been weeded out as carefully as the arable farmer weeds his plants. Where broad deep furrows used to breed those aquatic grasses which the cattle left, drains have been put in and soil thrown over till the level was brought up to the rest of the field. The manure carts have evidently been at work here, perhaps the liquid manure tank also, and some artificial aid in places where required, both of seed and manure. The number of stock kept is the fullest tale the land will bear, and he does not hesitate to help the hay with cake in the fattening stalls. For there are stalls, not so elaborately furnished as those of the famous stock-breeder, but comfortable, clean, and healthy. Nothing is wasted here either. So far as practicable the fields have been enlarged by throwing two or three smaller enclosures together. He does not require so much machinery as the great arable farmer, but here are mowing machines, haymaking machines, horse-rakes, chain harrows, chaff-cutters, light carts instead of heavy waggons--every labour-saving appliance. Without any noise or puff this man is doing good work, and silently reaping his reward. Glance for a moment at an adjacent field: it is an old 'leaze' or ground not mown, but used for grazing. It has the appearance of a desert, a wilderness. The high, thick hedges encroach upon the land; the ditches are quite arched over by the brambles and briars which trail out far into the grass. Broad deep furrows are full of tough, grey aquatic grass, 'bullpolls,' and short brown rushes; in winter they are so many small brooks. Tall bennets from last year and thistle abound--half the growth is useless for cattle; in autumn the air here is white with the clouds of thistle-down. It is a tolerably large field, but the meadows held by the same tenant are small, with double mounds and trees, rows of spreading oaks and tall elms; these meadows run up into the strangest nooks and corners. Sometimes, where they follow the course of a brook which winds and turns, actually an area equal to about half the available field is occupied by the hedges. Into this brook the liquid sewage from the cow-pens filtrates, or, worse still, accumulates in a hollow, making a pond, disgusting to look at, but which liquid, if properly applied, is worth almost its weight in gold. The very gateways of the fields in winter are a Slough of Despond, where the wheels sink in up to the axles, and in summer great ruts jolt the loads almost off the waggons.

Where the steam-plough is kept, where first-class stock are bred, there the labourer is well housed, and his complaints are few and faint. There cottages with decent and even really capital accommodation for the families spring up, and are provided with extensive gardens. It is not easy, in the absence of statistics, to compare the difference in the amount of money put in circulation by these contrasted farms, but it must be something extraordinary. First comes the capital expenditure upon machinery--ploughs, engines, drills, what not--then the annual expenditure upon labour, which, despite the employment of machinery, is as great or greater upon a progressive farm as upon one conducted on stagnant principle. Add to this the cost of artificial manure, of cake and feeding-stuffs, etc., and the total will be something very heavy. Now, all this expenditure, this circulation of coin, means not only gain to the individual, but gain to the country at large. Whenever in a town a great manufactory is opened and gives employment to several hundred hands, at the same time increasing the production of a valuable material, the profit--the outside profit, so to say--is as great to others as to the proprietors. But these half-cultivated lands, these tons upon tons of wasted manure, these broad hedges and weed-grown fields, represent upon the other hand an equal loss. The labouring classes in the rural districts are eager for more work. They may popularly be supposed to look with suspicion upon change, but such an idea is a mistaken one. They anxiously wait the approach of such works as new railways or extension of old ones in the hope of additional employment. Work is their gold-mine, and the best mine of all. The capitalist, therefore, who sets himself to improve his holding is the very man they most desire to see. What scope is there for work upon a stagnant dairy farm of one hundred and fifty acres? A couple of foggers and milkers, a hedger and ditcher, two or three women at times, and there is the end. And such work!--mere animal labour, leading to so little result. The effect of constant, of lifelong application in such labour cannot but be deteriorating to the mind. The master himself must feel the dull routine. The steam-plough teaches the labourer who works near it something; the sight must react upon him, utterly opposed as it is to all the traditions of the past. The enterprise of the master must convey some small spirit of energy into the mind of the man. Where the cottages are built of wattle and daub, low and thatched--mere sheds, in fact--where the gardens are small, and the allotments, if any, far distant, and where the men wear a sullen, apathetic look, be sure the agriculture of the district is at a low ebb.

Are not these few pictures sufficient to show beyond a cavil that the agriculture of this country exhibits the strangest inequalities? Anyone who chooses can verify the facts stated, and may perhaps discover more curious anomalies still. The spirit of science is undoubtedly abroad in the homes of the English farmers, and immense are the strides that have been taken; but still greater is the work that remains to be done. Suppose anyone had a garden, and carefully manured, and dug over and over again, and raked, and broke up all the larger clods, and well watered one particular section of it, leaving all the rest to follow the dictates of wild nature, could he possibly expect the same amount of produce from those portions which, practically speaking, took care of themselves? Here are men of intellect and energy employing every possible means to develop the latent powers of the soil, and producing extraordinary results in grain and meat. Here also are others who, in so far as circumstances permit, follow in their footsteps. But there remains a large area in the great garden of England which, practically speaking, takes care of itself. The grass grows, the seed sprouts and germinates, very much how they may, with little or no aid from man. It does not require much penetration to arrive at the obvious conclusion that the yield does not nearly approach the possible production. Neither in meat nor corn is the tale equal to what it well might be. All due allowance must be made for barren soils of sand or chalk with thinnest layers of earth; yet then there is an enormous area, where the soil is good and fertile, not properly productive. It would be extremely unfair to cast the blame wholly upon the tenants. They have achieved wonders in the past twenty years; they have made gigantic efforts and bestirred themselves right manfully. But a man may wander over his farm and note with discontented eye the many things he would like to do--the drains he would like to lay down, the manure he would like to spread abroad, the new stalls he would gladly build, the machine he so much wants--and then, shrugging his shoulders, reflect that he has not got the capital to do it with. Almost to a man they are sincerely desirous of progress; those who cannot follow in great things do in little. Science and invention have done almost all that they can be expected to do; chemistry and research have supplied powerful fertilizers. Machinery has been made to do work which at first sight seems incapable of being carried on by wheels and cranks. Science and invention may rest awhile: what is wanted is the universal application of their improvements by the aid of more capital. We want the great garden equally highly cultivated everywhere.

[The end]
Richard Jefferies's essay: Unequal Agriculture

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