Farm Competition in England 



127 



" steady improvement of their property." 

 But the grumbling of tenants repenting at 

 leisure bargains contracted in haste, has been 

 making itself heard sim.ultaneously. The 

 grumbling of farmers is oif course proverbial, 

 but unpleasant facts seem to argue that there 

 is a good deal of foundation for it in this case. 

 Landlords, as a rule, are loath to sell up. 

 Kut more men have been in difficulties than is 

 to be accounted for by successive summers of 

 most protracted drought, and some rather 

 indifferent harvests. Now the general strikes 

 of the agricultural labourers introduce a new 

 complication. The labourers have often a 

 good deal of reason on their side. Advances 



have been conceded in many instances, and 

 will doubtless be conceded in others. If the 

 tenant-farmers have to pay higher prices for 

 labour, where they have a struggle in any 

 case to make the two ends meet, the land- 

 lord must suffer in the long run, and the rents 

 of land must recede. It may be a question 

 how far the collateral pleasures and profits of 

 landowning will reconcile a man with capital 

 to invest to accepting for it a return that 

 relatively is absurdly small. He may re- 

 member, however, in making his calculations ' 

 that by sinking his savings in the soil he 

 insures himself against seeing them swept 

 away in one of our decennial panics. 



THE ALLOTMENT SYSTEM. 



By Sir Baldwin Leighton.* 



EFORE attempting to explain how, in 

 certain places, the condition of the 

 labourer has been improved by allowing him 

 some small share in the land on which he 

 lives by way of allotments and cowland, it 

 may be allowable to state two facts which, 

 whether they be accepted or rejected, whether 

 they be contradicted to-day and acquiesced 

 in to-morrow, or otherwise, are nevertheless 

 the result of distinct practical experience. 

 Firstly — -That without any very considerable 

 or sudden alteration in wages, any such rise, 

 for instance, as would upset the economy of 

 the farm or the cultivation of the land, the 

 position of the labourer can be greatly im- 

 proved, his income increased, his whole con- 

 dition and value ameliorated by his own 

 exertion on the land — which exertion at the 

 same time by acting upon the quality of his 

 labour and enhancing his value as a workman 

 might increase his contentment and attach- 

 ment to the soil, and eventually exterminate 

 his pauperism — so that the solution of this 

 question will not be by a mere direct rise in 



* Read before the National Labourers' Congress at 

 Leamington. 



wages, but by means more fundamental, more 

 drastic, and more human. Secondly — That 

 although much good may ensue from meeting 

 and conference in imparting information and 

 correcting fallacy, yet this matter will not be 

 settled by speeches or congresses, or even by 

 committees appointed thereat. It will be 

 settled by landlords, farmers, labourers and 

 others down in their several districts, on every 

 estate and farm, by personal devotion and 

 practical experiment rather than by canvas 

 and talk, or what a great writer describes as 

 " swarmery." But, whether these proposi 

 tions be conceded or not, it Is of the last- 

 importance that at a meeting like this, practi- 

 cal truth and practical suggestion should be 

 heard as to the best means of improving the 

 standard of the worst by the example of the 

 better. If it be conceded, as it must, that 

 the position of the farm labourer in some 

 parts is one of comparative comfort, that is to 

 say compared with the unskilled labourer in 

 towns and elsewhere, it must also be asserted 

 that his position in other parts of the country, 

 but more especially in the south of England, 

 is capable of and does require great ameliora- 

 on. 



