THE DORSETSHIRE HIND.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] SIR,—Will you allow me space for a few questions which your correspondent " C. Elliott's " letter, and the mournful comment
of your article the " Dorsetshire Hind," urge upon me ? For in very truth, this wholesale emigration is a desperate remedy, mean- ing confession of the failure of the resources of our civilization.
Yet why such a confession ? Is not increased population a result of increased civilization ? Does not civilization together with, and because of, its increase of population create increased means of maintenance, by the greater reproductiveness arising from the skilled appliances of science for economizing and utilizing all forces ?
How is it, then, that we have the increased population which civilization brings, without the increased power of maintenance which it also brings ? Must not the remedy lie not so much in removing one of these results, as in removing the hindrances which separate it from the other counterbalancing result ?
In the present stage of opinion, the remedy of labourers' clubs must apparently be left untried. Has English ingenuity but this solitary device for uniting these now separated results ? Has the soil of Dorsetshire already reached the extreme limit of production which expenditure of labour can attain ? Does not a market gardener dig two or three spits deep to get the enormous produc- tion he obtains? But how many inches deep is the soil of Dorset- shire scratched ?
Mr. Elliot proposes to remove our surplus population to new fields. We cannot stretch the area of Dorsetshire, but might we not double its depth by deeper cultivation? expend on its farms an amount of labour approximate to that which is expended on our market gardens ? Should we not, then, employ manyfold the amount of labour, and receive manyfold the amount of produce, which increased demand for labour would increase wages ?
Without increase of floating capital the Dorsetshire farmer cannot employ more labour on his land. Can no way be found of applying some of the enormously increasing capital of England in order to double the depth of Dorsetshire ? Or must we, even in the midst of our boasted progress, acknowledge our civilization to be so effete that it has no resource wherewith to order its own
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