INTERIOR COLONIZATION AND THE FUTURE OF SMALL PROPERTY 75 



The gaps caused by the war in the population, especially in the rural 

 population which has been more severely tried than other classes, have made 

 the problem of colonization by ex-soldiers one of the moment Small pro- 

 perty is the best means of increasmg the population, and soldiers fallen in 

 the war can be best and soonest replaced by the rural population. The prob- 

 lem is seen to be yet more important when the walue of agricultural pro- 

 duction, and especiall}' corn growing, in Hungary is considered. 



• The bishop of Stuhlweissenburg, Ottokar Prokdszka, has made himself 

 the promoter of this kind of interior colonization. At the general meeting 

 of the Federation of Hungarian Agriculturists, which has always given spe- 

 cial attention to interior colonization, he proposed the division into small 

 active and independent farms, which could be granted on lease first to the 

 invalids of the war and the widows of fallen soldiers and then to all citizens 

 who had fought at the front, of all ecclesiastical and communal property 

 and property subject to other services, that is a total areas of 10,000 arpents 

 at present not adequately farmed. 



His proposal was very favourably received and the problem was consid- 

 ered from different points of view. The Federation of Hungarian Agricul- 

 turists, as the corporation most interested, nominated two councils for the 

 study of problems of rural policy. The reporter of the council responsible 

 for rural policy, Dionis von vSebess, drew up two schemes for a law. The 

 first of them is on the agrarian right of succession and tends to introduce 

 the option of naming a single heir instead of the system of dividing real 

 estate, on the model of the German Anerbenrecht (i) or right to leave undiv- 

 ided property to one heir. The second scheme treats of a lease for fifty 

 years which would aim at transforming rural leases, converting the right they 

 confer fiom an obligation to a property right. Yet another scheme, connec- 

 ted with these two, concerns the granting of credit on the security of rural 

 implements, and would introduce into Hungarian law the system of chattel 

 mortgages. A fourth scheme is for the distribution of lands, and aims at 

 avoiding the abuses and speculation, now so common, which accompany 

 the parcelling of land, by introducing a legislative measure entailing State 

 superintendence and grants. 



The council for rural policy collected data at the same time as to the 

 largest estates on which colonization could be undertaken. 



We will not report here the various attitudes of political parties and 

 of the men most respresentative of Hungarian agiarian policy with reference 

 to these proposals, and the action taken to give them the practical force 

 which would allow of their realization. We will only state that Count 

 Tisza in the Chamber of Magnates declared himself convinced of the use- 

 fulness of moderate interior colonization in the kingdom. He made clear 



(i) For this iustitution, which is now applied to interior colouizatioii in North Germany, 

 see our issue for December 1912, Bulletin des Institutions iconomiques et So«a/t's, 3rd year, no. 

 12, pp. 147-148. 



