Country Life
A MECHANIZED FARM.
The Oxford Institute that researches so fruitfully into farm management has issued a leaflet that illustrates and supports the thesis of Mr. Orwin's latest book, by giving the tale of a particular farm. Mr. Chamberlain, son of a Wiltshire farmer, fanned on the ordinary " mixed " principle alongside Crowmarsh Bottle where Jethro Tull, almost the most famous husbandman in our annals, began his experiments in mechanization—blessed word—nearly two hundred years earlier. His spirit must have prompted this successor. Mr. Chamberlain, going counter to almost all precedent, sold every animal off his farm and devoted the whole of it to the growing of crops for sale. He scrapped animals and precedent together, gave up even every system of rotation, and kept no internal fences. By devoting the whole of his energies to the simplification of crop production by aid of modern machinery and artificial manures he made his farm pay when all around him were failing. The inference Mr. Orwin draws is that in large farms worked as factories lies the solution of many of our troubles. It may be so, but from how few instances is the deduction drawn ? About three, and two of those ultimately failed.
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