Miner Farmers A film of the admirable " Subsistence Production
" scheme, flourishing in " the Valleys," was shown last week to the King and Queen at Buckingham Palace. I happened to be staying for a night with an out-of-work Glamorganshire miner when the film was being made ; and came away more deeply convinced than ever that the surface of the ground was a richer mine than its depths. You may go deeper and fare worse. The minerals, of course, must be got, and the miners are rather like sailors who for the most part like the sea but long for land. Many miners who are proud of their profession and its com- panionship, nurse a passion for sun and trees, and show a genius for the cultivation of pigeons, poultry and plants. Was there ever a more moving account of this contrast in the miners' desires than in the record of the young Nottingham- shire coalminer whose spiritual home was Sherwood Forest ? A Coalminer (Hutchinson) is among the real books. " Sub- sistence Production," of the Glamorgan sort, benefits chiefly the elder men—and their wives ; but it gives a marvellous demonstration of the psychological influence of the land on depressed nature ; and its butcher's and baker's shops have proved the best sort of propaganda for the right nutrition. It happens, merely by accident, that the head of the physical fitness campaign comes from the neighbourhood of this eastern valley, and he will find that no recreational exercise is better than work on the land. It satisfies the only enemies of the physical fitness campaign, the critics, especially mothers of families, who say that nutrition must come first.
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