SECURITY FOR OUTLAY 225 



of produce — that is, income — or of increased realisable value of his 

 property, that is, capital. He may, indeed, as he has in many 

 cases done, buy his property at an excessive price ; but he may 

 also be fortunate in buying it cheap. However, experience shows 

 that, thinking of an investment of capital, when not under the sway 

 of exceptional circumstances, he is far less tempted than a tenant 

 bidding for the occupation of a farm — it may be only for one year — 

 to " plunge on a temporarily promising prospect. The stake is 

 at first sight seen to be too large. The tenant is in this matter in 

 good times his own worst enemy. Suppose that there are two or 

 three good years, all is couleur de rose to him, and he goes on bidding 

 and over-bidding, amid a crowd of applicants, as we have seen 

 lately, driving up his rent to a figure which is unreasonable on an 

 average computation. That is how our rents have in the past come 

 to rise up to that excessive level in view of which, as a matter of 

 course, depression, when it came, was doubly fatal, and became truly 

 ruinous. Then it was the landlords' turn to feel aggrieved. They 

 had come to look upon inflated rents as their proper due, and had 

 lived accordingly. Their income and accustomed way of living 

 would no longer square. The same blow of fortune, in fact, hit 

 both owner and tenant, painfully, and since neither of the two could 

 get out of his difficulty, ill-feeling grew up and revealed itself. At 

 farmers' gatherings in the 'eighties, in Sussex, I have heard many 

 complaints made about a supposed " semblance of sympathy ' : 

 which landlords were said to be showing to tenants when embarrass- 

 ments were larger than a moderate reduction, or even a remission, of 

 rent on the landlord's part could relieve. However, the farmers were 

 just farmers and nothing more, and could not, in Mr. Chamberlain's 

 phrase, " learn new tricks " and go into other business. Landlords 

 were equally " stuck," for during the depression land was a drug 

 in the market, and, if sold at all, could only be sold at a price which 

 left the vendors appreciably poorer than they had been before. 



Such is the result of the severance of ownership from occupation. 

 It helps little in good times, because it sets a super-master above 1 be 

 master of the business. In bad times it "floors" both parties. 

 No wonder the shrewd-minded Americans set their faces mosi 

 resolutely against the importation of "landlordism" into theil 

 country, and deprecate tenancy. They are cute men of busin> 

 and they have been quick to discern the poison contained in the 

 institution. There is a threat of its being smuggled in. Imt 1 1n- 

 public as well as the authorities are up in arms against it, and by a 

 stiff defence are endeavouring to bar its entrance. 



b.b. «j 



