256 RURAL DENMARK 



as it is driven into the sorely tried cultivators of the 

 soil that even if it comes, whoever may be benefited, 

 its hands will not be filled with gifts for them, may 

 not depression once more possess them ? If only 

 their minds could thus be turned to search out other 

 remedies for their troubles, such as that of ownership 

 in the place of tenancy and of co-operation in the 

 place of individual dealing, this new adversity would 

 not lack its uses. 



To return. If, however, any one doubts my general 

 proposition, namely, that much of our land is not as 

 well farmed as it might be, I would beg him to read 

 a communication published in the East Anglian Daily 

 Times of 26th November 19 10 under the heading 

 "The Abuse of Land," 1 which I reprint as a footnote, 



1 " There are few tenant farmers in this country, and we trust few 

 landowners, who abuse it, but it is impossible to close one's eyes to the 

 fact that there is a great deal of land, especially in some counties, where 

 heavy clay predominates, which has been abused unmercifully; and 

 although every man is supposed to possess a right to do what he likes 

 with his own, there is a line beyond which no one should step where the 

 interests of the ?iation are involved. It is possibly owing to the fact that 

 tenants are often difficult to obtain for land in bad condition that farms 

 are sometimes let to men without either capital or knowledge, with the 

 result that they are still further impoverished, and finally, on the tenant 

 quitting, become a burden in the hands of the owner, who, it may be, has 

 not the means of reclaiming, and who cannot find a tenant willing to pay 

 him a rent for it. There is no land, and we may refer to some of the 

 strongest and foulest in the country, which will not respond to ge?ierous 

 and determined treatment. It is, however, this treatment of which so 

 many fight shy. A tenant, especially a handy man, looks for an immediate 

 return, and his every effort is in that direction. He cannot afford to wait, 

 for the reason that he is not in possession of capital : hence he is pre- 

 cisely the man who should not be entrusted with a poor farm. He owns 

 little or no stock, he cannot pay for manure, which he should do in its 

 absence, he cannot employ sufficient labour, his equipment is bad, and 

 he scrapes along, and in two or three years abandons the farm, possibly 

 owing rent, and leaving the land foul, the gates broken, the ditches 

 and hedges untrimmed, and the buildings in bad repair. How can it be 

 otherwise? It is surely much wiser of an owner to let a farm free for 



