1885.] THE NATIONAL LAND COMPANY. 



THE NATIONAL LAND COMPANY. 



PERHAPS the most notable phase of the present agricultural 

 depression has been the meeting at the close of last month, in 

 Willis' Rooms, St. James' Square, London, to inaugurate this Company, 

 which is to essay the experiment of Fergus O'Connor, which failed 

 because attempted in the most reckless Utopian fashion of parcelling 

 out large estates en morccllemcnt. Home colonization now proposed 

 by the Duke of Argyle, the Duke of Westminster, Lord Derby 

 the Right Hon. G. T. Goschen, M.P., and confreres, may be either a 

 great success or failure, just as the many subsequent teachings of 

 experience are heeded or despised. The new Company may cite 

 accomplished facts and figures to aid in the proper disposition 

 amongst farm labourers of the farm in Berks of 400 acres, which 

 Sir R. Loyd Lindsay has placed at its disposal. The successful co- 

 operative tillage of a farm in Warwickshire, which the landlord, 

 when it was thrown on his hands, placed in those of twelve agricul- 

 tural labourers headed by his former land-steward, at the same time 

 acting as banker, and the determination of the authorities of Balliol 

 College, Oxford, to place their Upton Hill farm of 400 acres under 

 the same management, together with the cleanliness, thrift, and hope 

 engendered by this associative plan of farm working, have made it a 

 necessary factor of this new movement. The Company also suggest 

 that labourers may buy of them, by payment by instalments, now 

 long worked in building societies, patches of eight or ten acres in 

 contiguity on one estate, the owners of which may hire out their 

 days' labour to the neighbouring large farmers, as indeed is already 

 done on rented land. A pair of horses, kept by one man who would 

 be an independent farmer, might do the ploughing, etc. A number 

 of yeomen proprietors and cottagers, all acquiring their lots by 

 deferred payments, or having their rents fixed as a perpetual charge 

 on the value of the land, might also occupy a part of the same estate 

 with the co-operators. 



Such divisions of estates into small lots demand unity of plan for 

 their successful accomplishment. Thus no fewer than 400 head of 

 poultry are fed on the Warwickshire co-operative farm above alluded 

 to ; its eggs and butter produce about £6 per week. All this 

 may have influenced the Michaelmas division of profits, which last 

 year ran from £2 to £5 each labourer, besides his 15s. of weekly 

 wages and perquisites. In such cases the local market must 

 dominate the details of cultivation. Further, a single crop is 

 usually the leading feature of the most successful systems of the 

 ;petite culture proper; whether that be flax or fruit, suitable 



