ORGANISATION. 193 



benefit, \A'hich should, now that we are anxious to settle 

 small folk upon the land, prove of considerable practical 

 value in the future. Tenants or purchasers of small 

 parcels of land quite naturally have to pay a proportionately 

 higher price for what they buy or rent than the man who 

 takes the whole piece. There is more trouble about the 

 transaction, more expense, and also more risk. However, 

 landlords and vendors do not invariably stop at that natural 

 and legitimate limit. They are apt to " stick it on," 

 simpl}^ because they can get a longer price. Earth hunger 

 is keener in the small man coveting a small piece of land 

 — or wishing to hire it — than in the large man. I have 

 quoted one instance of an irregularly shaped bit of land 

 of fair quality in the East Riding, which I found a small 

 tenant renting at three pounds an acre, after a large farmer 

 had failed to make it pay at nineteen shillings. Very much 

 worse instances might be quoted from abroad. I have already 

 quoted the late Baden Minister, Dr. Buchenberger's, brand- 

 ing of small letting — at exorbitant rents it was — as " legal- 

 ised usury." In Italy contadini have been very badly 

 bled. And what has furthered the movement of collective 

 land renting so much in Roumania is the fact that, not 

 only were the small farmers badly overcharged, but that 

 they were systematically exploited by middlemen of an 

 alien and greatly disliked race, who made a regular trade 

 of such extortion, reducing their tenants to the position of 

 mere peons, working for them, besides paying an exorbitant 

 rent. Abroad, in Italy, and more particularly in Sicily 

 and Emiha, and in Roumania and Serbia, the movement of 

 collective renting has spread fast and wide and has done 

 a great deal of good, both to the small husbandmen and 

 to the nation. In Germany, its benefits — in buying — are 

 to a not inconsiderable extent practically secured by the 

 operations of the " General Commissions " and the " Renten- 

 bank " already spoken of. Where purely renting takes 

 place, the landlord finds his account quite as much in 

 collective renting as does the tenant. For the saving 

 to him in trouble and risk — dealing with a host of small 

 men of unascertained financial standing, by the substi- 



