Commercial Fruit Growing 7 



ing Raspberries at Blairgowrie forced up the rents from 3 per acre to 12, 

 and a similar process is going on in the Evesham district, and will be found 

 to exist wherever market gardeners crowd together. 



Doubtless there are many advantages in being closely associated with 

 others engaged in the same industry, and in making that industry the 

 dominant one in a district; but the advantages have to be paid for in 

 increased rent. It may be that the question of a pound an acre is of small 

 moment as between good land and bad land, but it cannot be denied that 

 the increasing vogue of the growing of fruit and vegetables lor market is 

 decreasing the rate of profit, so that every item of expenditure must be 

 carefully scanned, and this of rent cannot be called an unimportant one. 

 Especially is this so when it is remembered that, under the existing method 

 of levying taxation for local purposes, rates are based upon the rent. 

 Legislation of recent years has taken the course of adding to the duties 

 of local governing bodies, the expenses incurred in the discharge of such 

 extra duties falling upon the occupiers' rate; thus the cultivator has found 

 his liability to local rates a constantly increasing one, often in respect of 

 services from which the town dweller reaps the benefit. Under the Public 

 Health Act, 1875, the occupier of land is entitled to a reduction of three- 

 fourths upon the general district rate. The Worthing Local Board made 

 a determined attempt to deprive the cultivator under glass of the benefit 

 of this provision in the famous Purser case. Happily the attempt ended in 

 failure the judgment in the Queen's Bench Court being entirely in favour 

 of the market gardener and the question has never been carried further. 

 The same success has not attended the efforts of the market gardeners to 

 secure the benefit to their greenhouses under the Agricultural Rates Act. 

 By this Act land is allowed an exemption of half the Poor Rate, but it 

 was decided in a case taken to the House of Lords that greenhouses are 

 buildings and not entitled to benefit under it. Thus we have the curious 

 state of things created by these two decisions: Under the first, market- 

 garden land is still market-garden land though you cover it all over with 

 glass; under the second, market-garden land ceases to be market-garden 

 land, and becomes buildings, when you put up a greenhouse upon it. There 

 is another matter in connection with local rating which will come as an 

 unpleasant surprise to the starter in fruit growing. Our system of levying 

 local taxation is admirably adapted for penalizing the active man and 

 sparing the lazy one. When a man is guilty of a misdemeanour he is 

 brought before the court, and society expresses its determination to put 

 a stop to such conduct by the infliction of a fine. When a man invests 

 his capital in the planting of fruit trees, society, in the persons of the 

 overseers, expresses its appreciation of the enterprise, and in order to 

 encourage others fines him heavily in the shape of an increased assess- 

 ment, no matter what his rent may be, on the ground that he has added 

 to the rental value. Some local authorities have tried to inflict this 

 punishment upon the planter of Raspberries, but the courts could not go 

 with them. The planter of fruit trees, however, may depend upon it he 



