226 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



When tenancy was first introduced in this country there were 

 altogether different conditions prevailing than obtain now, and 

 different results were looked for. Farms were not supposed to 

 change hands frequently, and rents were considered as, on the whole, 

 stable values assuring, in Lord Beaconsfield's words, a "living" to 

 the farmer under all circumstances — by the side of a second " living " 

 secured to the landlord, and a third to the labourer. They were 

 believed to represent the average value of holdings — high, it might 

 be, for unfavourable years, but correspondingly low for good ones, 

 striking a happy mean between the two. That was one of the 

 governing thoughts in those long leases which used to be common, 

 and some of which were, in pre-depression time, praised up on the 

 very ground that, besides giving the tenant a fairly long spell of 

 time to make good his outlay, they tended to steady agricultural 

 income. Among such model leases was the famous Scotch nineteen 

 years' lease, and, furthermore, the no less commended twenty-one 

 years' lease introduced later in England, with an option of notice 

 to be given four years before expiration. However, bad times 

 have made leases unpopular — certainly among farmers, who now 

 prudently hesitate to bind themselves for a long term when there 

 is no telling what the period to be fixed may bring forth. Even the 

 fourteen years' lease, of which a good deal was heard in the course 

 of the Royal Commission inquiry, has not been able to hold its 

 own. 



The year-to-year system, which has practically taken the place 

 of leases, has, indeed, secured tenants against risky engagements, 

 but at the same time it has necessarily, by the insecurity introduced, 

 lowered the system of farming, and so kept production beneath 

 what it might and ought to be. Quite accountably, no one will care 

 to put either more labour or more money into rented land than he 

 can make reasonably sure of taking out of it again, with profit, 

 during his term of tenure. The consequence, as intimated, has been 

 poor farming — witness Sir Th. Middleton's report. The merits of 

 principles are sometimes best judged in extreme cases. Such an 

 extreme case is that of the German farmer, who used, summer after 

 summer, to migrate into the " black earth " parts of Russia to sow 

 his wheat or rye, sell it standing to " the Jew," who burnt the straw, 

 and carry off the money, leaving the manure made by the few beasts 

 kept for such nomad farming to float down a river, if there was one, 

 or else to waste its fertilising qualities upon the desert air. Similar 

 extreme cases happen in the western parts of the United States, of 

 which even more will have to be said. The ruinousness of this 



