security for their capital invested in improvements, and freedom of enterprise (_e.g._ in cropping and tilling), in order that they may do their best with the land. An extended system of small holdings and allotments, guaranteed by a thorough measure of Tenant Right, together with free trade in land as well as other commodities, would do much to place moderate farms within the reach of industrious and thrifty yeomen and labourers. Greater facilities for transit, including the abolition of the essentially protective system of preferential railway rates, would enable producers to put their produce with ease upon the home market, for English food requirements guarantee an enormous and steady demand at home for every scrap of food-stuff that the land is capable of producing. The farmer is slow to adapt himself to changed conditions, but a profitable future is open to him even if he gives up wheat-growing and betakes himself more to dairy-farming and market-gardening. But it may not be necessary for him to give up wheat, for it seems probable that the wheat area of the world, except in India, will not increase; since foreign farmers are beginning to find out that they cannot put wheat on the English market at the present low prices. People will see that it is desirable, and that ultimately it will be profitable, to recall capital and labour back to the land which it is evident that it has left; {211} and that it is the height of economic folly to rely, as some do, upon the extension of our manufacturing industries to counteract agricultural depression. Prosperous agriculture means for us prosperous manufactures, and from an economic point of view the interests of the plough and the loom are identical. Neither can be served by protective tinkering. Reforms of a totally different character are needed, foremost among which is a widespread reduction of rent, and a general rearrangement of the relations between landlord and tenant. It is on the face of it ridiculous to assert that, with an unequalled demand in the home market for all he can produce, the English farmer cannot find some means of making the land pay and pay well. But before he can do this he must spend more capital upon it than he has lately been able to do. [Illustration: 1890 INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND _Showing Population and Manufactures_ Manufacturing districts are shown by slanting lines; large manufacturing towns by black circles; and the most populous counties are coloured darker than the others. It will be noticed that population since 1750 has shifted very much to the North and North West of England, whilst manufactures are far more concentrated than formerly.] CHAPTER VII MODERN INDUSTRIAL ENGLAND