lage are much the same as in
overcrowded China, but his national importance and hence his ranking in
society is much higher. In Japan to-day farming absorbs 60 per cent. of
the population. The system of tillage, in many respects primitive, is
yet very thorough, and by means of skilful manuring makes one plot of
ground yield two or three crops per annum.[981] Every inch of arable
land is cultivated in grain, vegetables and fruits. Mountains and hills
are terraced and tilled far up their slopes. Meadows are conspicuously
absent, as are also fallow fields. Land is too valuable to lie idle.
Labor is chiefly manual and is shared by the women and children; mattock
and hoe are more common than the plow.[982] Such elaborate cultivation
and such pressure of population eventuate in small holdings. In Japan
one hectar (2 1-2 acres) is the average farm per family.

[Sidenote: The case of England.]

While Japan's agriculture reflected the small area of an island
environment, and under its influence reached a high development,
England's from the beginning of the fifteenth century declined before
the competition of English commerce, which gained ascendency owing to
the easy accessibility of Great Britain to the markets of Europe. The
ravages of the Black Death in the latter half of the fourteenth century
produced a scarcity of agricultural laborers and hence a prohibitive
increase of wages. To economize labor, the great proprietors resorted to
sheep farming and the raising of wool, which, either in the raw state or
manufactured into cloth, became the basis of English foreign trade. A
distinct deterioration in agriculture followed this reversion to a
pastoral basis of economic life, supplemented by a growing commerce
which absorbed all the enterprise of the country. The steady contraction
of the area under tillage threw out of employment the great mass of
agricultural laborers, made them paupers and vagrants.[983] Hence
England entered the period of maritime discoveries with a redundant
population. This furnished the raw material for her colonies, and made
her territorial expansion assume a solid, permanent character, unknown
to the flimsy trading stations which mark the mere extension of a field
of commerce.

[Sidenote: Emigration and colonization from islands.]

Even when agriculture, fisheries and commerce have done their utmost, in
the various stages of civilization, to increase the food supply, yet
insular populations tend to