348 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL chap. 



— the only way to enable the whole community to benefit 

 by the increased value which the community itself gives 

 to land. 



The use of land is twofold. Its chief and primary use 

 is to supply to every household in the kingdom, the 

 conditions for healthy existence, and, whenever possible, 

 some portion at least of their daily food. When all are 

 thus supplied with the land necessary for a healthy home, 

 the remainder should be devoted to cultivation in such 

 a way as to produce the maximum of food, and at the 

 same time to support and bring up the maximum number 

 of healthy and happy food-producers. All experience 

 shows that these two things go together, and that in any 

 country the maximum of food is produced when the 

 greatest possible population live upon and b}^ the land. At 

 one extreme we have the great farms of S. Australia and 

 California, cultivated with the minimum of human labour 

 and producing a net return of about ten bushels of wheat 

 per acre, and at the other extreme the allotments of our 

 farm labourers producing food to the value of £40 per acre. 



But in order that our labourers and mechanics may 

 each be enabled to have, say, an acre of land to live on, 

 and an acre or two more to cultivate, if they require it, with 

 the power of getting a small farm of, from ten to forty 

 acres whenever they have obtained money enough to 

 stock it, the land must be let, not sold to them. For at 

 first a man wants all his little capital to enable him to 

 cultivate even the smallest plot of land, and if he has to 

 buy it, even by the easiest instalments, he is to that 

 extent crippled. Moreover it is a bad thing for him to own 

 the land absolutely, because he is then open to the tempta- 

 tions of the money-lender. Instead of economizing and 

 pinching in bad seasons, he borrows money and mortgages 

 his land, and thus falls under a tyranny as bad as that of 

 the hardest landlord. In every part of the world the small 

 freeholder falls a victim to the money-lender. 



As a State-tenant the occupier would have all the 

 essential rights and advantages of a freeholder. His 

 tenure would be practically perpetual. He would have 

 the right to sell or bequeath his holding, or any part of it, 



