In the summer of 1894 the verses "A Good Time Coming" foreshadow the end of the agricultural depression, but a few weeks later the farmer was bitterly disappointed. His crops had been plentiful, but the plenty had brought down the price of wheat in some cases to 16s. and 19s. a quarter. In short, there had been a golden harvest, but he couldn't get gold for it. Let it be noted, in parenthesis, that if _Punch_ espoused the cause of the farmer, he was not wholly wedded to the old rural _régime_ of the Squire and the Parson. In 1894 there is a humorously ironic lament by a lover of the "Good Old Times" in the form of a new version of "The Village Blacksmith," suggested by the actual return of a blacksmith to one of the new parish councils at the head of the poll. When the Conservatives came back to power in 1895, Lord Salisbury, in a new fable of Hercules and the Farmer, is represented as adroitly ascribing agricultural depression to Providence, and exculpating the Government which had done its best; but the farmer is unconvinced by this pious explanation. The remedy which the Government sought to apply in the Agricultural Land Rating Bill of 1896 failed to satisfy _Punch_. Mr. Chaplin is seen, in an adaptation of Æsop, shifting the burden of rural rates from the horse (country) to the ass (town). But the latter was _Punch's_ special _protégé_, and the verses in May express accurately enough the cry of the poor townsman, the rate-crushed cockney, protesting against Mr. Chaplin's remedy when the income-tax was already 8d. in the pound! The income-tax payer this time is the patient ass, hoping that some at least of the surplus of six millions may be devoted to the relief of his gigantic burden. To return to Agriculture, a sidelight is thrown on the shortage of farm hands in 1901, in the picture of an elderly farmer rebuking a very small boy for slacking, only to be met by the retort "Chaps is scarce." The parallel to the Great War is obvious, but one would hardly have thought that the Boer war was on a large enough scale to affect the labour market in this way. In 1903 voluntary labour bureaus were started, but the results were disappointing, and _Punch_ quotes an account of an experiment in Wiltshire. Fifteen men had been sent down from London; two returned in three days "because it rained"; and twelve more were back in a fortnight. Our increasing reliance on imported food had already prompted _Punch_ to indulge in a forecast of the Stores of the Future, at which Tierra-del-Fuego Devonshire cream and similar products are offered for sale because it had become impossible to get any home-grown produce. The exodus from the land to the cities was already in full swing, and we find _Punch_ as early as 1896 commending a clergyman who had started dancing classes in his village near Stroud as a counter-attraction to the lure of the towns. In this context it is worthy of note that in 1900 _Punch_ suggested that, as a result of