CONDITIONS AT COTTENHAM 155 



Now that the local people have got in at proper 

 prices the land was paying them, and the result of 

 the land company's venture in the abstract might 

 certainly be called successful that is to say, when 

 looked at from the point of view of settling small 

 men on the land. 



One buyer of land informed me that he could 

 have bought the land originally, at the time when 

 the land company was offering it, but that he, in 

 common with all the local men, knew that their 

 price was considerably above the real value of the 

 land to them ; and that the only people who could 

 be got to give this unremunerative figure would be 

 outsiders, who did not thoroughly understand the 

 cultivation of the district in the way the local men 

 did. The one man who did buy was, he expressed 

 it, ' in a trap.' He could not leave without losing 

 the full value of the instalments he had paid up so 

 far, and yet he was unable to make it really pay, 

 so he had to hang on as best he could. 



The other * foreigner,' being only a tenant, had 

 been able to clear out before he had lost every- 

 thing, and his holding was now held by a local man, 

 who could make it pay. In the long run, when 

 W. A. Atkinson's holding comes into the market, 

 it will probably be bought by a local man at a 

 proper price, who will be able to make a success 

 of it. 



The moral of this undertaking seems to be that 

 the local agriculturist has a head on his shoulders, 

 and is not to be tempted by deferred payment 



