Land Problems and National Welfare 



Assets and as far as possible to guide the flow 

 of population to those parts of the Empire, 

 where population would do naost good, not only 

 to the country in question, but to the whole 

 Empire. 



One of the duties of this Board shonld cer- 

 tainly be to check the emigration from England 

 of those men who are wanted to develop the 

 land of the Mother Country ; in other words, 

 to see that our own waste areas are first pro- 

 perly colonised, and then from the overflowing 

 of population of the rural districts to send out 

 colonists to our countries beyond the seas. 



Sir Horace Plunkett, in his excellent book 

 " The Rural Life Problem of the United States," 

 suggests that a Country Life Institute should 

 be created there to work in connection with the 

 Conservation Board. Such an Institute could 

 with equal profit be connected with our Imperial 

 Conservation Board whenever it is formed. 



The duty of this Country Life Institute would, 

 on the one hand, be to furnish the Conservation 

 Board with all necessary data, and, on the other, 

 to create a sound public opinion in regard to 

 Land. As I have said before a very general 

 cause of the neglect of Land throughout Anglo- 

 Saxon countries is that our schools of Political 

 Economy have been unsound, ignoring Land as 

 the basis of all prosperity. So that the Country 

 Life Institute would have to undertake the 



330 



