A tempting little shop it used to be,
displaying shining Severn salmon; and it was here that the farmers,
after the market, obtained the supplies commanded by the missus at
home.
And there was the abandonment of the Corn Market proper, for the class
of farmers who survived hated to transact their business indoors. The
attendance of millers and dealers, except of those who had cargoes of
foreign corn at Gloucester or Bristol to dispose of, became irregular.
Sales of farm stock and implements took place in every village on
farms which had passed from father to son for generations, coupled
with the sacrifice of valuable implements and machinery for want of
buyers. There followed the stage when landowners who could find no
tenants, and had heavily mortgaged estates, essayed to make the best
of them by laying away the arable land to pasture, undertaking the
management themselves with, perhaps, an old broken-down tenant as
bailiff. The politicians and the general public did not apprehend the
danger of the situation, in spite of innumerable warnings, until the
German submarines were sending our foreign food supplies to the bottom
of the sea; and now that the immediate danger of starvation has
passed, they appear already to have lapsed again into an attitude of
apathy.
We hear the blessed word "reconstruction" on every side, but the only
official propositions for the permanent establishment of agricultural
prosperity that I have heard are utterly inadequate.
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