Land Problems and National Welfare 



expenditure for my personal income. And my 

 first idea was, naturally, how to enlarge that 

 margin. Improvement in this direction could 

 only be obtained by reducing current ex- 

 penditure without causing the estate to suffer, 

 and also, if possible, by increasing the receipts. 

 The worst feature of the case was that even 

 the small margin referred to was by no means 

 stable : given an extra bad year with the farms 

 in hand it would disappear entirely. When 

 I succeeded in 1903 — a bad year in my part 

 of the country — I had about 4,000 acres in 

 hand, in five or six large farms, which not 

 only had been paying no rent or interest on 

 working capital, but for the preceding five 

 years had shown a loss of over ^i per acre 

 per annum on the farming operations. 



The land in hand was poor and had been 

 run down from years of too low farming. 

 Still it was land which in 200 or 250 acre 

 farms would have let fairly well ; quite as 

 good, in fact, as that of the average Danish 

 land. But it was land which in large farms 

 would not let during the bad times, and which 

 until recently no one would look at at any 

 price — not even at half a crown an acre. The 

 whole situation made me at first feel almost 

 reckless : at all events it inclined me for kill or 

 cure measures. The only direction in which I 

 found I could effect any decided saving in 



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