150 THE LAND AND ITS PEOBLEMS 



Councils are supposed to provide land for applicants 

 living within their jurisdiction, they are not obhged to 

 do so for men wishing to migrate from the town. 



The basic fact is that, ov»^ing to the cost of building, it 

 requires an absolutely prohibitive sum to equip a new 

 small holding. And owing to straitened public finance, 

 it is practically impossible to get from the County 

 Council the loan of one half the necessary working 

 capital. 



We must therefore face the fact that, for the present, 

 it is almost impossible for an inexperienced man to obtain 

 a small holding in England ; also that, from the national 

 point of view, the experienced agriculturist should be 

 considered to have the first claim. We must enable as 

 large a proportion as possible of our agricultural labourers 

 to get small holdings, or at all events allotments, and so 

 finally to work up to the full-fledged small holding. 

 As it is, the national exchequer is bound to lose many 

 millions sterling on the small holdings which are being 

 provided for those ex-Service men who were agriculturists 

 before the war, and who are now applicants for small 

 holdings. 



(3) On previous pages I have urged the necessity of 

 increasing the number of cultivators, by recruiting them 

 from the ranks of those with little or no previous experi- 

 ence in agriculture. 



Yet in the preceding paragraphs I have been pointing 

 out how impossible it is for them to get upon the land at 

 home. And this is a situation which we must accept for 

 the present, until such time as the cost of building and 

 equipment comes down and until we have a number of 

 full-fledged group settlements in this country. 



So it comes to this ; the man who is really determined 

 to go in for farming, who has the necessary strength and 



