156 AWAKENING OF ENGLAND. 



railway companies, which monopolise the 

 export carrying trade to England, dictate the 

 terms under which Jersey produce shall be 

 taken to its chief market. Then the salesman, 

 whether he is on the quay of St. Helier or at 

 his stall in Covent Garden, dictates the prices 

 at which the produce of the island shall be 

 sold ; and the landlord, in giving the last turn 

 to the economic screw, leaves the cultivator 

 of the soil squeezed of everything but a bare 

 subsistence. In spite of all this, his labours 

 have been prodigious. 



Rents seem to average about £10 an acre, 

 and I was pointed out one field, a very early 

 potato site, which could command a rent of 

 £30 an acre. Those who see a Utopia in 

 peasant proprietorship should go to Jersey to 

 be disillusioned, for even in this tiny island 

 you get the owners of early or urban sites 

 living a life of idleness on the rents accruing 

 from land on which their grandfathers worked 

 honestly with all their might. 



I came across one farmer who told me that 

 it cost him £16 a vergee (two and a quarter 

 vergees to the acre) for the growth of a crop 

 of potatoes which realised for him only £14. 

 A loss on potatoes is serious, for, as a miller 



