SECURITY FOR OUTLAY 229 



long as it please, part of the term, the fag end, will inevitably be 

 a time of exhaustion of the fertility which he has first put into his 

 soil, and possibly, also, of the old " heart " that he previously found 

 in it. 



Now that is directly opposed to the interests of national agriculture 

 as a calling, and a loss to the nation. The landlord has no ground 

 for complaint, and probably lays his account with the fact. We see 

 the result to the nation, however, in Sir Th. Middleton's comparison 

 of our own with a foreign agriculture carried on under a different 

 system. We produce less, and that means damage to the nation. 

 A horse or a bullock cannot give its maximum of work under a 

 process of alternate fattening and starving. Neither can the soil, 

 whatever its quality. It is, above all things, a steady yield that in 

 this matter the nation wants, not a perpetual see-saw of fair yields — 

 for the maximum will be only " fair " — and poor ones. 



It is mainly on this ground that tenancy is now so generally 

 denounced and anathematised in the United States. Tenancy has 

 been there increasing on what alike authorities and the public 

 consider an alarming rate. There are districts in which tenants 

 now constitute 55 per cent, of the number of agricultural occupiers 

 and that has been, not because expert agriculturists, even only a 

 portion of them, have embraced the opinion that tenancy is the 

 better form of occupation. Nobody asserts that in America. 

 But, on the one hand, actual tenants could not help themselves on 

 account of want of means. And, on the other, speculation in land — 

 which recks not of the interest of agriculture, nor yet of that of the 

 nation, but looks simply and greedily at the prospect of a good 

 sale, as population thickens, and therefore does not scruple to let 

 the land run down — has come in, powerfully to dominate the 

 situation. There have been curious advances in price in the 

 country. I have known men who purchased big parts of what is 

 now Chicago at only £8 per acre. There was no consideration for 

 improved agricultural value in the case of the fabulous increase 

 which followed. The temporary tenant simply took out of the 

 land what he could get ; and the landlord did not mind. Under 

 such circumstances quite naturally the land is " robbed " — that 

 is the current phrase. 



The case of another class of American tenants is far more reason- 

 able. They start with the object of eventually becoming owners of 

 their land, but for the moment they lack the money wherewith to buy 

 such. Accordingly, as an intermediate stage, they occupy wh.it land 

 they can get as tenants, hoping to make sufficient out of 1 heir tenancy 



