HOW TO SETTLE 201 



most anti-progressive system of medietas, now known as mezzadria 

 or metayage, the only recommendation of which is that in the times 

 of the great depression it made distress least felt. The poor rustic 

 has been " sweated " — and so has the land. There is in Italy 

 poverty and backwardness everywhere except where there is 

 property in land, as in smiling Tuscany and Lower Lombardy, 

 countries in which, so my Socialist friends in the Romagna have 

 assured me, with bitter regret, there is no chance for their pleading. 

 The people there are all well off and comfortable, and are considered 

 arrant " reactionaries." But elsewhere contadini are now forming 

 their affittanze collettive, co-operative settlements, as the only way 

 in which they can emancipate themselves, though in form remaining 

 tenants. More is not possible to them in their poverty. 



The question, which of the two systems is agriculturally the most 

 to be recommended, as putting the land financially to the best use 

 is, however, not all that we have to consider in this connection. 

 We are out for making new rural '" homes " — homes that will 

 maintain their several families, no doubt, and yield something to 

 carry over ; but, above all things, " homes " in which people may 

 be able to live in comfort and with the sense that they are their 

 own. Now for such purpose there can be no question whatever 

 that freehold holdings, which secure to their occupiers their own 

 lares et penates, are wholly preferable, while at the same time they 

 assure to the community that enviable stability of rural conditions 

 which we admire in countries like France. The chief reason cur- 

 rently given for the preference maintained for tenancy, and no 

 doubt the true one, is, as already pointed out, that ownership 

 costs and locks up money, which would be much better employed 

 as working capital. There is no gainsaying this contention. In 

 the case of large farmers it may raise the question whether they 

 are not in truth farming too large an area in proportion to their 

 means. However, facilities given for credit may help them over 

 that difficulty. When we come to the small cultivator whom, 

 mind you, we are pressingly asking and urging to settle on the land, 

 and to make himself a rural home, in the national interest, we shall 

 evidently have to deal with the matter in a different way. We 

 cannot look for large means in his small pocket. But we know 

 that, if he is the right man — of the sort that I have just argued that 

 we should make sure that we secure for the purpose — he will be 

 able to turn his holding to good account and earn from it an income 

 which, provided that sufficient time be given to him, may easily 

 be made to pay for the cost of purchase of his home. 



