A GENTLEMAN possessing some three thousand acres of land, the most of it contiguous, one field with another, or, as he himself, his agent, his bailiff, his wife, his moneylender, and others called it, “in a ring fence,” was in the habit of asking down to the country at Christmas time some friend or friends, though more usually a friend than friends, because the income he received from the three thousand acres of land had become extremely small.

He was especially proud of those of his friends who lived neither by rent from land nor from the proceeds of their business, but by mental activity in some profession, and of none was he prouder than of an Economist whom he had known for more than forty years; for they had been at school together and later at college. Now this Economist was a very hearty, large sort of a man, and he made an amply sufficient income by writing about economics and by giving economic advice in the abstract to politicians, and economic lectures and expert economic evidence; in fact, there was no limit to his earnings except that imposed by time and the necessity for sleep. He was not married and could spend all his earnings upon himself—which he did. He was tall, lean, and active, with bright vivacious eyes and an upstanding manner. He had two sharp and healthy grey whiskers upon either side of his face; his hair was also grey but curly; and altogether he was a vigorous fellow. There was nothing in economic science hidden from him.

This Economist, therefore, and his friend the Squire (who was a short, fat, and rather doleful man) were walking over the wet clay land which one of them owned and on which the other talked. There was a clinging mist of a very light sort, so that you could not see more than about a mile. The trees upon that clay were small and round, and from their bare branches and twigs the mist clung in drops; where the bushes were thick and wherever evergreens afforded leaves, these drops fell with a patter that sounded almost like rain. There were no hills in the landscape and the only thing that broke the roll of the clay of the park land was the house, which was called a castle; and even this they could not see without turning round, for they were walking away from it. But even to look at this house did not raise the heart, for it was very hideous and had been much neglected on account of the lessening revenue from the three thousand acres of land. Great pieces of plaster had fallen off, nor had anything been continually repaired except the windows.

The Economist strode and the Squire plodded on over the wet grass, and it gave the Squire pleasure to listen to the things which the Economist said, though these were quite incomprehensible to him. They came to a place where, after one had pushed through a tall bramble hedge and stuck in a very muddy hidden ditch, one saw before one on the farther side, screened in everywhere and surrounded by a belt or frame of low, scraggy trees and stunted bushes, a large deserted field. In colour it was very pale green and brown; myriads of dead thistles stood in it; there were nettles, and, in the damper hollows, rushes growing. The Economist took this field and turned his voluble talk upon it. He appreciated that much he said during their walk, being sometimes of an abstract and always of a technical nature, had missed the mind of his friend; he therefore determined upon a concrete instance and waved his vigorous long arm towards the field and said:

“Now, take this field, for instance.”

“Yes,” said the Squire humbly.

“Now, this field,” said the Economist, “of itself has no value at all.”

“No,” said the Squire.

“That,” said the Economist with increasing earnestness, tapping one hand with two fingers of the other, “that’s what the layman must seize first ... every error in economics comes from not appreciating that things in themselves have no value. For instance,” he went on, “you would say that a diamond had value, wouldn’t you ... a large diamond?”

The Squire, hoping to say the right thing, said: “I suppose not.”

This annoyed the Economist, who answered a little testily: “I don’t know what you mean. What I mean is that the diamond has no value in itself....”

“I see,” broke in the Squire, with an intelligent look, but the Economist went on rapidly as though he had not spoken:

“It only has a value because it has been transposed in some way from the position where man could not use it to a position where he can. Now, you would say that land could not be transposed, but it can be made from less useful to man, more useful to man.”

The Squire admitted this, and breathed a deep breath.

“Now,” said the Economist, waving his arm again at the field, “take this field, for instance.”

There it lay, silent and sullen under the mist. There was no noise of animals in the brakes, the dirty boundary stream lay sluggish and dead, and the rank weeds had lost all colour. One could note the parallel belts of rounded earth where once—long, long ago—this field had been ploughed. No other evidence was there of any activity at all, and it looked as though man had not seen it for a hundred years.“Now,” said the Economist, “what is the value of this field?”

The Squire had begun his answer, when his friend interrupted him testily. “No, no, no; I don’t want to ask about your private affairs; what I mean is, what is it builds up the economic value of this field? It is not the earth itself; it is the use to which man puts it. It is the crops and the produce which he makes it bear and the advantage which it has over other neighbouring fields. It is the surplus value which makes it give you a rent. What gives this field its value is the competition among the farmers to get it.”

“But——” began the Squire.

The Economist with increasing irritation waved him down. “Now, listen,” he said; “the worst land has only what is called prairie value.”

The Squire would eagerly have asked the meaning of this, for it suggested coin, but he thought he was bound to listen to the remainder of the story.

“That is only true,” said the Economist, “of the worst land. There is land on which no profit could be made; it neither makes nor loses. It is on what we call the margin of production.”

“What about rates?” said the Squire, looking at that mournful stretch, all closed in and framed with desolation, and suggesting a thousand such others stretching on to the boundaries of a deserted world.

How various are the minds of men! That little word “rates”—it has but five letters; take away the “e” and it would have but four—and what different things does it not mean to different men! To one man the pushing on of his shop just past the edge of bankruptcy; to another the bother of writing a silly little cheque; to another the brand of the Accursed Race of our time—the pariahs, the very poor. To this Squire it meant the dreadful business of paying a great large sum out of an income that never sufficed for the bare needs of his life ... to tell the truth, he always borrowed money for the rates and paid it back out of the next half year ... he had such a lot of land in hand. Years ago, when farms were falling in, in the eighties, a friend of his, a practical man, who went in for silos and had been in the Guards and knew a lot about French agriculture, had told him it would pay him to have his land in hand, so when the farms fell in he consoled himself by what the friend had said; but all these years had passed and it had not paid him.

Now to the Economist this little word “rates” suggested the hardest problem—the perhaps insoluble problem—of applied economics in our present society. He turned his vivacious eyes sharply on to the Squire and stepped out back for home, for the Castle. For a little time he said nothing, and the Squire, honestly desiring to continue the conversation, said again as he plodded by his friend’s side, “What about rates?”

“Oh, they’ve nothing to do with it!” said the Economist, a little snappishly. “The proportionate amount of surplus produce demanded by the community does not affect the basic process of production. Of course,” he added, in a rather more conciliatory tone, “it would if the community demanded the total unearned increment and then proposed taxes beyond that limit. That, I have always said, would affect the whole nature of production.”

“Oh!” said the Squire.

By this time they were nearing the Castle, and it was already dusk; they were silent during the last hundred yards as the great house showed more definitely through the mist, and the Economist could note upon the face of it the coat-of-arms with which he was familiar. They had been those of his host’s great-grandfather, a solicitor who had foreclosed. These arms were of stucco. Age and the tempest had made them green, and the head of that animal which represented the family had fallen off.

They went into the house, they drank tea with the rather worried but well-bred hostess of it, and all evening the Squire’s thoughts were of his two daughters, who dressed exactly alike in the local town, and whose dresses were not yet paid for, and of his son, whose schooling was paid for, but whose next term was ahead: the Squire was wondering about the extras. Then he remembered suddenly, and as suddenly put out of his mind by an effort of surprising energy in such a man, the date February 3rd, on which he must get a renewal or pay a certain claim.

They sat at table; they drank white fizzy wine by way of ritual, but it was bad. The Economist could not distinguish between good wine and bad, and all the while his mind was full of a very bothersome journey to the North, where he was to read a paper to an institute upon “The Reaction of Agricultural Prosperity upon Industrial Demand.” He was wondering whether he could get them to change the hour so that he could get back by a train that would put him into London before midnight. And all this cogitation which lay behind the general talk during dinner and after it led him at last to say: “Have you a ‘Bradshaw’?”

But the Squire’s wife had no “Bradshaw.” She did not think they could afford it. However, the eldest daughter remembered an old “Bradshaw” of last August, and brought it, but it was no use to the Economist.

How various is man! How multiplied his experience, his outlook, his conclusions!