nationalise the land by bringing each piece into the hands of him who
could make most out of it. If I saw my way to use a piece of laud so
that it should be worth £1000 to me, and if on looking into the Rate
Book I saw that the present owner only considered it worth £600 to him,
I should at once lodge my £900 with the magistrate. A few owners would
really feel as Naboth. They could indulge this feeling by putting a very
high rateable value on their property. The high rates they would thus
have to pay would be the due ransom of the land; but in general every
piece of land would pass into the hands of him who could make most of
it. There would spring up, as in Attica, a large class of professional
sycophants. By their incessant operations, properties small and great
would be continually passing from the slothful and the old-fashioned
to the enterprising and modern-educated. No nationalisation of the land
could get so much out of it or conduce so highly to progress as the
National Rate Book. We should have companies and adventurers buying up
all sorts of pieces of land, just as formerly they speculated in taking
up land for mining in Cornwall. We should see an extraordinary activity
in the employment of capital in England.
For all public improvements, as a new street or a Government military
station, a few minutes with the map and Rate Book would show the
Government officer or engineer the best route or plot to take, and would
also show him the exact cost of the land for the scheme. There would be
no law expenses, no prolonged fights, no juries, no arbitrations.
Wastes, downs, heaths, bogs, would be rated very low. It would be in the
power of Government to take up largely and at small cost large areas
of Surrey heaths, etc., to provide air and recreation ground for
an evergrowing metropolis. In this manner, too, public commons and
quasi-public commons might be secured to the public all over England: a
public-spirited town-council or a local Kyrle Society would have a wide
field and an immense stimulus for action.
I have not stopped to rebut the common (but mistaken) idea that burdens
on the land (being in gross not more than the rackrent) affect the
cultivation. Partners have long drunk at market dinners "Confusion to
the black slug that devours the English farmer." How is it that these
farmers did not (do not) see that there are tithe-free farms (and some
tithe-free parishes) in England, and that the tenants of such farms get
no advantage by being tithe-free?
As I explain elsewhere, a tenant with several years of his lease to
run is (economically considered) a part landowner: if the tithe were
suddenly abolished, tenants with leases would get relief as well as
their landlords. So if a new tax or rate is laid on land (and made
payable by the tenant), all tenants with leases will have to pay such
tax or rate out of their own pocket so long as their lease lasts;
afterwards it will fall wholly on the landlords.
It is repeated now, in nearly every country newspaper, that the English
farmer cannot compete with the American grower because of the burdens on
the land of England. I will not write out (I cannot improve) Ricardo's
proof that rent does not enter into price. The "burdens" on land are
really first charges on the rackrent and do not affect a year-to-year
tenant at all. When a farmer meditates taking a farm he asks not merely
what is the rent: he inquires what is the tithe, what the average amount
of the rates (and is that likely to increase or diminish during the next
seven years); the intending tenant only wants to know what sum in all
he will have to pay for the farm; whether any of this payment is called
tithe or not, or whether some of it is quit-rent, or whether he is to
pay the land tax for his landlord's convenience,--about all this he
cares nothing; they are mere questions of names to him.
5. MAKING THE MOST OF OUR LAND.
John S. Mill, following W. T. Thornton, advocated a system of petty
proprietors against the English system of large farms with hired
labourers. Figures were quoted to show the splendid produce got by petty
proprietors in France and elsewhere--as the result, however, of infinite
toil. The petty proprietors were, moreover, shown to be much better
off than our hired labourers; and the magic of property combined with
independence was represented as having produced a superior class.
These things may have been so, at least in some cases and particular
countries, at the date (before 1846) when J. S. Mill originally put
forward these views. The liberal, and radical writers on political
economy and sociology still follow (most of them) on the same side,
which has become in a manner historically the liberal side. There is
much against it.
First, Production on the large scale is cheaper than on the small; this
is as true of agriculture as of other industries. The large farmer
has one fixed and one movable steam-engine of his own; he has his own
drills, threshing and winnowing machines, reaping and mowing machines.
The petty proprietor may hire these, but at a dear rate, and few of them
can work to any advantage on his small patches of corn. The large farmer
has large fields; he saves area as against the petty proprietors; he has
fewer headlands and fences, harbouring weeds and stopping the sun and
air. The large farmer can work corn and sheep together; one shepherd and
his boy will look after 500 ewes. You may travel 200 miles by rail in
France and not see two flocks of sheep. Sheep-farming is seen all the
world over to be an industry that pays on the large scale; and the want
of it injures the corn produce of the French petty proprietor. Louis
Napoleon sent Lavergne to make a report on English farming; the
substance of his report is, that were France farmed on the English
system by English farmers, the corn produce would be four or five times
what it is now; leaving sheep out of the question.
The advocates of peasant-proprietorship, at least the better informed
ones, do not now suppose that a peasant receiving a few acres out of a
large English average farm (and capital to make a start) could make
a subsistence out of it. They believe that peasant-proprietors could
maintain themselves on small plots of rich land in and close to towns,
working as market-gardeners or cowkeepers rather than as farmers.
This narrows down the peasant-proprietor theory vastly in its practical
application; it remains hardly a national question. But I have been
astonished to see in the neighbourhood of London of late years the large
"gentleman" market-gardeners steadily displacing the smaller and all the
single-handed men. The subject is so important that I will take one of
two instances in detail. I have seen a gentleman market-gardener, eight
miles or so from Covent Garden, growing strawberries, several acres in
each patch. He had young men (a separate staff) out at daybreak to
keep the birds off. The small gardener, growing a few long beds of
strawberries, is ruined by the birds, whether he lets them eat or goes
into the expense and labour of netting. The gentleman has his own large
spring-vans waiting; these vans are fitted for fruit, and as the pickers
gather the strawberries they deliver them in small and frequent parcels
to the packers. The moment the first van is laden it starts at
three miles per hour and travels to Covent Garden itself, where the
strawberries are delivered to the fruit-dealer, who buys them wholesale
of the gentleman-gardener. The small grower has to get his strawberries
to the local railway station, and to arrange to get them from the London
terminus to market; his trouble and expense are considerable; but, more
important still, his strawberries do not come into the hands of the
wholesale dealer in the "condition" that the large grower's do. This
large grower admitted that he was paying £12 an acre per annum for some
of his land; he added, "My labour per acre, and even my manure per acre,
costs so much that I do not think about a few pounds rent more or less."
These gentleman-gardeners are on the average better educated than the
small market-gardeners; they travel about the country, gather hints,
and pick up new good varieties of strawberries, etc. From their scale of
operations and varied sorts of strawberries they can, even in rough
wet weather or in drought, always supply to their wholesale dealer
some fruit. In fine, they beat the small grower at every point;
they undersell him at Covent Garden; they outbid him for desirable
garden-land within reach of London. It may be said that in growing plain
vegetables the small gardener would not be at such a disadvantage. I
will reply (without detailing all my observations) that I have seen the
same gentleman-gardener growing a two-acre plot of early radishes, and
that he completely spoilt early radishes for all the small gardeners.
The advocates of peasant-proprietors have thought cowkeeping hopeful
for small men. In my experience dairies of fifty or sixty cows have an
enormous advantage; they can have perfectly designed dairies; they have
enough cream to make butter daily throughout the year (which saves much
trouble, loss, and occasionally inferior butter); they can maintain
approximately a uniform supply. In short, they beat, undersell, and
displace the small cowkeepers wherever the large dairy is moderately
well managed.
The cottager or peasant-proprietor has, I believe, an advantage in
poultry of all kinds. When poultry are kept in very large numbers
they are more liable to disease, and the diseases are more
disastrous--sweeping off the whole large stock. Fowl and egg farming is
one of the most successful, perhaps the most successful point with the
French peasant-proprietors. To make birdfarming successful the proper
plan is to keep a moderate number of as many birds as possible--fowls,
"galeenies," ducks, geese, turkeys, large pigeons--and to go in for
eggs as well as fowls. I have not seen peasant-proprietors in
England attempting this, which seems to me one of the most hopeful of
experiments for them.
The second point urged by Mill, and still by some, is that
peasant-proprietors are better off than English labourers. With the
present price of agricultural labour in England this seems to be
very generally not the case; the French peasant-proprietors and the
agricultural lower classes in Germany are (with small exceptions) now
worse off than the English farm-labourer; they work very much harder
and they get less to eat. The economic truth doubtless is that the
hired labourer may or may not be better off than the peasant-proprietor,
according to circumstances; and circumstances in England just now are in
favour of the hired labourer.
Then as to independence, it may fairly be questioned whether a good
agricultural workman, now practically liberated from the Law of
Settlement, and who can command a fair wage anywhere, is not really more
independent than a French peasant absolutely tied to a three-acre plot
for life.
The real difference between the advocates of the nationalisation of
the land and the Conservatives is this. The Conservative says, "Leave
everything to its natural course, and let us have no Government
interference. If the peasant-proprietor really can maintain himself
while paying as high a rent as the ordinary farmer, we shall soon
have plenty of them." Or, the Conservative has no objection to
a philanthropist starting a few picked peasant-proprietors as an
experiment. But he objects to starting any gigantic new scheme of
working the land, except as a matter of business; he objects to
Government philanthropy, which means giving away other people's money.
Our farm-labourers, as a rule, know nothing of gardening, and few of
them can command £10 capital. I have sometimes looked round to select a
picked man, and wondered whether, if I put him in a selected five-acre
plot near a town, and also lent him the £200 or so capital requisite to
give him a chance, this picked agricultural labourer would succeed;
and I have inclined to think he would not succeed. I need not therefore
express any opinion as to what would happen if Government were to take
10,000 or 100,000 farm-labourers, advance them £200 each, and place them
in five-acre or ten-acre plots: there would be a tremendous bill to pay,
and the plan of peasant-proprietors would be put aside for many a day.
If the plan is to be successful it must be introduced gradually and in a
business manner, _i.e._ what does not pay must not be persisted in.
The plan, now frequently put forward, that Government is to employ all
men out of work to reclaim and bring into cultivation waste lands, is
liable to additional objections. Who is to fix the wages, the hours of
labour, and the tale of work for the Government labourers? If these were
fixed as the advocates of the plan wish them fixed, Government would
soon have all the labourers of the country in its employ. If, on the
other hand, these were fixed below the market rate, Government would
only have such labour as the Poor-Law Unions now have, and which they
find hardly worth employing.
Leaving this (practically grave) difficulty aside, if a heath or a moor
is now uncultivated it is because nobody sees how it can be profitably
brought into cultivation; it can always at a sufficient outlay be
reclaimed, but that will not be done unless it is calculated that the
rent of the land when reclaimed will pay the interest on the whole
expense of reclamation, and something besides. If Government reclaims
land that private persons cannot reclaim with profit, we may be sure
that Government will suffer a considerable loss. This must be provided
out of taxes: are the promoters of reclamation of wastes by Government
prepared for this?
The wastes of England are the only land left the public. Elsewhere the
public can only walk along a pavement or a high road. The good land is
all pretty well in cultivation; and the best of what is left can give
but a moderate profit on reclamation, while its enclosure, under Act
of Parliament, deprives the public of it for ever. Hence Professor H.
Fawcett, throughout his parliamentary career, put his veto with great
success on all enclosure schemes. It is possible that there might be
a profit on the enclosure of Epping Forest: who will now support that
reclamation?
It is very desirable that wealthy private philanthropic individuals and
wealthy private philosophic societies, should try experiments in small
farming, market-gardening, co-operative farming, reclamation of wastes,
etc. There is no hindrance to their so doing: they can readily hire as
many farms as they please at cheap rents, and subdivide them, and put in
picked labourers with an advance of capital. But that Government should
embark in uncertain speculations of this kind is quite another thing.
The safe general principle, whether in the sale of horses, the letting
of houses, or the letting of land, is that Government should not
interfere; or, to speak more correctly, Government interference should
only interfere to prevent restrictive covenants and to ensure Free
Trade, so that every article (land included) may pass without restraint
into the hands of the man to whom it is worth most. The greater the
individual profit the greater the national profit. Under a section
headed "Law," below, I will say something about the removal of entail,
etc.--a dry but important branch of the question. The National Property
Rate, with the aid of sycophants, would remove many obstructions.
There has been much controversy and several Parliamentary Acts
concerning the regulation of bargains between landlord and tenant. How
a tenant or a landlord can be injured in such a bargain is impossible
to understand, except in so far as a man is injured who gives £30 for
a horse worth only £20. Will Parliament interfere to protect such
horse-purchasers? The matter has been obscured by omitting to notice
that a tenant with a long lease at a fixed rent possesses a share
(often the larger share) of the "landlord interest," in the language of
political economy. As a simple example: A tenant took, say in 1850,
a Scotch farm on a Scotch lease absolute of nineteen years, at £500 a
year. Within two or three years of his so taking it the rise in wool,
potatoes, and other things, caused the value of the farm to rise to £600
a year, and this increased value lasted the whole of his lease and
some time after. Now, treating the increase of value of £100 a year as
permanent (as it was very soon regarded both by landlord and tenant),
it is clear that this £100 a year for the period of the lease (say
seventeen years to run) went to the tenant, not to the landlord; and the
first seventeen years of an annuity in fee is worth more than all the
rest.
It is evident that on a seven years' (absolute) lease the tenant would
similarly get a good share (not the larger share) in all the improvement
in value that occurred during his lease. Up to ten or twelve years ago
the value of land had been rising very steadily in the South of England
for near half a century. Rents were pushed up very generally at the
termination of every lease, though noblemen, great county gentlemen, the
Church, and the Universities, as a rule, never raised the rent on an old
tenant; but they could raise the rent all the more by a jump when a new
man came in. During all these years the tenant-farmers complained rarely
of their leases, though they were often subject to covenant nuisances
about cropping, selling off the farm, game, and incoming for the new
tenant.
But during the last ten years the process is reversed. A farmer took a
farm for £500 a year for seven years in the south of England, and before
the lease had run half out the farm was not worth £400 (and in many
cases not £300). Here the tenant suffered a heavy loss. When in former
years he got a gain he never proposed to allow his landlord 15 per
cent extra rent. But now that the drop in value of such farms has taken
place, and probably will not proceed further, a tenant who takes a
new lease requires no Act of Parliament to protect him: he can protect
himself. By the date the Abolition of the Game Laws (a wrong but
intelligible phrase) was carried, the farmers in the South of England
were in a position not to take any benefit under that Act, but to
covenant for all the game and sporting on their farms for themselves. So
as to the Act regulating the leases between tenant and landlord, where
they chose to avail themselves of it, the tenant now can generally get
more favourable terms outside the provisions of the Act. Farms are so
down, tenants so scarce, that landlords have to give way on all minor
points. Wherever Government interference operates at all, it is almost
sure to operate harmfully. Consider for a moment the case of "incoming."
Formerly, by the "custom of the country" south of London, the incoming
tenant paid for two years' dressing for the corn crops, north of London
he paid the outgoing tenant only for one year's dressing, by the custom
of the country too. The question practically only amounted to increasing
by 5 per cent the capital necessary to take the farm south of London.
Now what can be gained by Government interference in such a matter as
this, in which each farmer and land-agent was in general in favour of
the "custom" he had grown up under?
A prevalent idea is that the land is not highly farmed enough, and
that the land of England might be made to yield much more, and that
Government is to cause this to be done. It is most unfortunate to raise
this theory at the moment when land is "down," i.e. when produce is
cheap, labour expensive. Every farmer knows that the only way to meet
these conditions is to farm "lower." In a south country farm the farmer
will sow much less corn, and try to keep more sheep. In the Western
States of America, where produce is very cheap, labour very dear, the
"lowness" of the farming is always abused by the English traveller
(who thus shows that he knows nothing about either farming or political
economy). A farmer, twenty-five years ago, took a very large and fine
corn farm: it had been worked on the five-course system, i.e. three
white crops in five years; the farmer made a careful calculation whether
a four-course husbandry, i.e. two white crops in four years, would not
be more profitable; it appeared to come to exactly the same thing. At
this juncture a rise of a shilling a week in wages took place; this gave
a clear advantage to the four-course, and the farm was at once worked
round to the four course shift. In this simple case a small rise in
wages brought about a considerable diminution in gross produce, while
the loss to the farmer was small. The remarks in this section have been
directed to the case, common in the South of England, where there has
been within the last twelve years a fall of rent from 25 to 50 per cent.
In pasture farms, in rich land, and in potato farms (wherein you can
keep one-sixth the land in potatoes), the fall in rent has been much
less--sometimes inappreciable.
But, some person may urge, if Government interferes, and compels the
farmer to farm higher than he wishes to himself, the gross produce
will be more, and the employment for labourers will be at the same time
better. True, and this is the quintessence of Protection. The whole
point of Free Trade is to allow capital to be employed where it is most
profitable: high farming is only to be preferred (both for individual
and nation) to low when it is the more profitable. Capital that cannot
be employed to ordinary trade profit on the land must be transferred to
other industries where it will earn the ordinary rate of trade profit;
or, if there is no trade yielding such profit ready to absorb it in
England, the capital must go to the United States or New Zealand and
earn an increased profit. As to the labourers, they must follow the
capital; or they may starve in England leaving few progeny, while the
well-fed labourers of the Western States of America and New Zealand
leave large families: this will do instead of emigration.
It is to be noted that great improvements in farming, especially in
machinery, have been effected in the last thirty years, largely by the
operation of the All England and County Agricultural Societies. I
note further that the people who abuse the farmers for bad farming
and clamour for Government interference to promote high farming,
conspicuously refrain from supporting these agricultural societies.
6. FREE TRADE IN RAILWAYS.
Government might monopolise the retailing of tea in England. At present,
in a country town like Exeter or Canterbury, there may be fifty
grocers selling tea. In their competition they lay out a good deal in
advertisement and handsome shop fronts in the most expensive streets;
they keep (the fifty between them) many more hands than are necessary
to retail the tea. All this outlay has to come out of the consumer.
Government would buy pure tea first-hand in large quantities cheap; a
few trustworthy highly-paid officials would test it, value it, and see
it done up in sealed packages of sizes from 16 lbs. down to 2 oz.: these
might be sold in an odd room attached to the Post Office in each town
and village. There can be little doubt but that a saving in capital
and labour would thus be effected, while the public would get the tea
cheaper and purer than at present. The 2 oz. purchaser, in particular,
would pay a good deal less for 2 oz. of real tea than she pays now for 2
oz. of rubbish.
Or,--Government might hand over the tea-retailing of Canterbury and five
miles round to a company as a monopoly: the state of things would be
something like what we experience in the large stores now: the public
would get their tea probably cheaper (quality considered) than at
present; the company would make a large profit on their capital. If
Government sanctioned two tea-retailing companies at Canterbury, these
would probably make a less rate of profit: though, after the first heat
of fight was over, they would probably agree to sell the same tea at the
same (profitable) rates, and the consumers would gain little out of so
restricted a competition. If a new company were to apply for a private
Act to enable them to retail tea at Canterbury, the old company would
show Parliament that themselves sufficed to satisfy the requirements of
the public.