THE USES OF CAPITAL 251 



is the more undesirable, because the small holder 

 should be able to do better with his money. Farming 

 as a business must be run on business lines, and there 

 ought to be a greater profit from capital placed in a 

 business, with the possibilities of a more or less frequent 

 turn-over, than from capital locked up in land that is 

 wanted for cultivation, and especially in land bought at, 

 as I have said, more than its commercial value. In 

 the case of a person of independent means, or of a pro- 

 fessional man having no enterprise of his own in which 

 to invest his savings, surplus money might well be put 

 into such land ; but the position is different with an 

 agriculturist whose limited supply of capital represents 

 the primary essential for the successful management of 

 his business, and who really cannot, as a rule, afford to 

 introduce into business any considerations that may be 

 purely sentimental. As a peasant proprietor, he is 

 dependent entirely on his own capital. As a tenant, 

 he is working, to a certain extent, with the capital of 

 his landlord, paying, through his rent, in part, only a 

 low rate of interest thereon.* 



At a farm in Yorkshire I saw recently some build- 

 ings which the landlord had erected, at a cost of 300, 

 to enable the tenant to carry on his dairy business to 

 better advantage. Had the tenant owned the land, he 

 would have had either to put up these buildings himself or 

 go without them. As it was, they were provided by the 

 landlord, without, as it happened, even such increase in 



* Mr. Druce, an Assistant Agricultural Commissioner, wrote in 

 a report published in the ' Allotments' Blue-Book of 1882 : 



1 If a man has ,1,000 to spend, he can buy 10 acres of land, 

 and have still sufficient capital to work them ; but as a tenant 

 farmer he can farm 100 acres with a capital of 10 an acre, and 

 will make more money, as he has the advantage of using his land- 

 lord's capital at a very low interest, whereas if he buys the land the 

 money is sunk.' 



