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definite of the many proposals made, and that which at present appears to be most widely supported, is to set up " a Government export commission, charged with the duty of disposing of the wheat surplus in such a manner that the domestic price may rise behind an adequate tariff-barrier to the point of restoring pre-war purchasing power of wheat in the domestic market." This would appear to be a modern variant of the application of the "sliding scale "principle, with which readers of English economic history are familiar, the chief difference being that it appears to involve more complicated and costly administrative machinery.

The whole subject of the marketing of American farm crops is of extreme interest, and the co-operative methods adopted are particularly worth consideration by English farmers, notably in regard to those products which are sold in the home markets. The literature on the subject is very voluminous, for every University and College has a staff of economists studying the subject and contributing to its examination and exposition. Space fails to give even the barest outlines of the admirable work which is being carried out in this connection.

The rural problems of America have a closer relation to those of this country than is commonly realised. Our insular ignorance and indifference hinder us from understanding the relationship, and even to those who are well informed on transatlantic tendencies a sparse, but happily increasing, number-the agricultural affairs of the United States appear remote from our interests and hidden from our understanding. It was unexpected, therefore, to find evidence in America of a familiarity with British agrarian questions among so many of those with whom I came in contact during a visit of a few weeks last summer. This was, of course, not surprising among members of University faculties who were teaching agriculture or economics. Many of them have a world-wide reputation in their special subjects. But it was my privilege to have the opportunity of meeting a large number of students attending summer courses in agricultural economics. Many of them were graduates of the University, and were either engaged in farming or some other rural avocation, or were teachers at colleges or schools in the rural districts. Their desire for information about British agriculture was less remarkable than the knowledge which in many cases they already had about it.

At Cornell University, I was asked by members of a large class

of summer course students to devote an hour to answering questions, which were written out and handed to me. I quote a

few of the questions :

What is your opinion in regard to the policy of England of importing large quantities of food? Is this situation dangerous?

Can England afford to neglect its agriculture?

What per cent. of interest do large English landowners receive on their investment?

What are the chief factors in the cost of raising wheat in England that seem to make it unprofitable to compete with foreign wheat?

The last time I was in England, a year ago, it seemed to me that the type of agriculture was becoming more intensified and specialised than before the war. Was this developing from Government supervision? What are the causes of this apparent change?

Has the Labour party introduced any outstanding agricultural policy?

There were many others, but these suffice to indicate that intelligent interest is taken by those closely concerned with American agriculture in the problems of English agriculture. I also found notably at Wisconsin University-among the summer course students, many who had evidently given close attention to the history and development of the English land system. This is, perhaps, not strange, in view of the fact that the systems of American land tenure are, in a large degree, derived from English precedents, and to trace the derivation is a fascinating chapter of economic history. The rural problems of the United States have their counterpart in the British Isles, and on both sides of the Atlantic a better comprehension of their correlation and interaction cannot fail to help in their solution.

HENRY REW

I.

2.

HIGHLAND RURAL INDUSTRIES

Prize Essays and Transactions of the Highland Society. 1799-1824.
6 vols. Edinburgh: C. Stewart.

Analysis of the Statistical Account of Scotland. By Sir JOHN
SINCLAIR, Bart. Constable. 1825.

3. The Second Statistical Account of Scotland. 1846.

4. The Linen Trade. By ALEX. F. WARDEN. Longman, Green, Longman. 1864.

5. Industries of Scotland, their Rise, Progress and Present Condition. By DAVID BREMNER. A. & C. Black. 1869.

6. Notes and Sketches illustrative of Northern Rural Life in the Eighteenth Century. By W. ALEXANDER. Edinburgh: David Douglas. 1877.

7. Report to the Board of Agriculture in Scotland on Home Industries in the Highlands and Islands. By Professor W. R. SCOTT. Cd. 7564. 1914. 8. Sketches of the Manners and Characters of the Highlanders of Scotland. By General David Stewart of Garth. 2nd ed. 1825.

9. Reports on Highland Destitution. 1848.

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T the present day there is a marked leaning towards handicraft work. On æsthetic grounds many hand-made articles command a considerable market, and for social reasons the production of such goods is encouraged. From the educational point of view, hand work has a distinct value, and it is also of importance as an element in schemes for the re-population of the countryside for the connection between small holdings and forms of employment subsidiary to agriculture is a close one. The encouragement of home crafts is an important object of the Women's Rural Institutes; a Government report upon the rural industries of Great Britain is now being drawn up; and a Rural Industries Intelligence Bureau, with a State grant-in-aid, has been established. These facts are significant of the general tendency.

In England, it is long since rural industries have played a really important part in the life of any considerable section of the community. In Scotland, on the contrary, economic development has been more irregular and patchy, and a long sequence of attempts has been made to encourage rural handicrafts for social rather than economic reasons. At the present time, therefore, the story of these Scottish industries is especially

interesting. It shows that two main factors: (a) the prevailing system of agriculture-which is the basic rural industry--and (b) the general condition of the industrial life of the country, have been mainly responsible for their success or failure.

A fundamental difference exists between the rural craftsman and the modern industrial employee. It is not merely caused by the fact that one man controls a power-driven loom, while the other works his loom by hand and foot. The factory worker is employed under the modern capitalist system. He is a wageearner engaged upon one process in the long sequence of supply. He has no concern with the provision of his raw materials, with the choice of the pattern, or with the finding of a market for the finished article. The handicraft worker, on the other hand, is relatively a complete unit of production. The degree varies in different industries, but these rural handicrafts are the survival not merely of old-fashioned tools, but of economic conditions that are elsewhere obsolete.

In old days, in the Highlands, exchange was almost unknown, and each family was a self-supporting unit. A Highland Society prize essayist pointed out as the "great bar to the improvement of the Highlands, that there is no separation of profession, but that every man does everything." In out-of-the-way parts, even forty years ago, people were to be found who, in addition to building their houses, winning their peat, raising their food-stuffs and spinning their yarn, made their pottery, soap and lights, most of their harness, and part of their agricultural implements. Specimens of their handiwork can be seen in Scottish museums, and there can be little regret that the prosperity and amenities of civilisation should have superseded "findlans" (unwelted brogues), "craggens" (sun-dried pottery) and splinters of firwood or rushes soaked in oil.

The development of rural handicrafts made a great advance when each family found it more profitable to produce part of its requirements, viz., foodstuffs, yarn for clothing and blankets, and the wooden parts of implements, and to exchange its surplus. This was the usual practice over a large part of Scotland during the eighteenth century. Writing a little earlier, Lady Errol says: "The women of this country are mostly employed spinning and working up stockings and making of plaiden webs, which the Aberdeen merchants carry over the sea; it is this which bringeth

money to the commons; other means of getting it they have not." At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Sir John Sinclair states that the homespun linen was sent to market with the other farm produce, and adds: "The sums thus obtained enable the farmers and their families to live with much greater ease."* In many parts of the country the women paid the whole of the rent by their handicraft work.

The inter-dependence between agriculture and handicraft work is typical of eighteenth century rural industries, and it is therefore worth while to ascertain what the farming of the time was like and how far it supported the people who lived by it. A main difference between the Scottish countryside of the eighteenth century and of to-day is the relative number of people supported on the land. The lairds encouraged a dense population because their status-often their security-depended upon the strength of their following. Scotland, in the words of an eighteenth century writer," was essentially a place where a good soldier or a foolhardy desperado was of more value than a good husbandman.... The farms were divided and sub-divided, to make room for a greater number of soldiers, and were thus frittered down to the atoms in which they are now found." The many contemporary writers on Scottish agriculture of the eighteenth century all allude to this dense crowding. Holdings seem to have averaged from six to twenty-six acres in different districts, and the joint farms supported some cotters also. Sir Walter Scott, in the preface to "Rob Roy," quotes Graham of Gartmore: "The people are extremely prolific and therefore so numerous that there is not business in the country according to its present order and economy for one-half of them. Every place is full of idle people accustomed to arms and lazy in everything but rapines and depredations."

The land was far less fit to maintain this large population than at the present day. Before the introduction of deep drainage the valley bottoms were mostly bog, and much of the best land was therefore wasted. Under the old system of agriculture the ground was rank with weeds, and carried successive crops of grain. It was abominably ploughed, and the "outfield "-often the larger proportion of a farm-was insufficiently manured. Sinclair, in

*Alexander" Northern Rural Life," p. 134.

† Marshall," General View of the Central Highlands," pp. 22, 23.

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