SMALL HOLDINGS. 335 



It is for the vendor of a property to find purchasers. He 

 knows best the object with which he is deahng and the 

 people concerned in the matter. It is for him to prepare 

 a scheme of partition of his property, agreeing as to terms 

 with the intending purchasers. There must be purchase. 

 The Germans do not believe in tenancy. They will not 

 have it. Even when I spoke to them of our excellent 

 "Tenant Co-operators" for this purpose, under whose 

 scheme a block of land is purchased collectively, to be let 

 severally in plots, they would not listen to my argument. 

 Under its depolonising scheme, the Government has had to 

 put up with some exceptional letting — very much a contre- 

 cceuY, as President von Wittenburg admitted to me — simply 

 to proceed with their main aim. The land had been bought 

 and, for want of suitable applicants for purchase, peculiarly 

 conditioned pieces must be disposed of to tenants. Else- 

 where, in Germany too, the letting of small holdings had 

 a bad name. The rents paid are made excessive. In 

 Yorkshire I have found small holders renting at £2 an acre 

 (it had been £3) land which had previously been let to a 

 large tenant at igs. and had not answered. In South- 

 western Germany I met with worse cases. I have official 

 authority for saying that plots whose real value was about 

 48s. per acre were let at £8 to £11 per acre. And Dr. 

 Buchenberger, then at the head of the Agricultural Depart- 

 ment in Baden, did not hesitate to stigmatise letting of 

 small holdings as " legalised usury " (on account of the 

 excessive rent demanded). Under the " General Com- 

 missions " partition is invariably carried out by purchase. 

 The intending vendor is expected to submit his " plan " 

 to the " Commission " of his district, by whom it is carefully 

 scrutinised and dissected. As a rule it is amended at points, 

 in the purchasers' interest. For the Government is deter- 

 mined to enable settlers to make a good start, on a holding 

 well capable of sustaining them — what the French call 

 " viable." It has no procrustean rules as to size or build- 

 ings. The settler is to please himself. Indeed, the Govern- 

 ment often prefer to see the settler setting up his own 

 buildings in his own way and according to his own ideas. 



