GENERAL CONCLUSIONS 163 



except when he can hire land under them. Much 

 of his disinclination to buy may be due to want of 

 capital, but much of it seems also to arise from his 

 own shrewd knowledge of what is going to benefit 

 him and what is not. The people who have come 

 forward are small capitalists, cranks, and the odds 

 and ends of roving agricultural adventurers. There 

 has been a smattering of really successful men, 

 some failures, and a number belonging to that 

 class who would have been failures if they had had 

 to make a living off their land. 



Each undertaking is useful in its own way as an 

 object-lesson. We see how, in the case of the two 

 companies whose fates have become matters of 

 history, although the local agriculturists refused to 

 buy when the land was offered to them on the 

 ridiculous terms of their would-be benefactors, 

 there were men amongst them willing to do so 

 when the crash came ; for then the land had to be 

 disposed of at its ordinary market value. In these 

 cases the ' foreigner ' who failed has been replaced 

 by the local man who is now succeeding. Until 

 the crash comes the cautious local rustic is content 

 to laugh in his sleeve as he digs the new-comer's 

 land at a higher wage than he was receiving from 

 his former local employer. 



112 



