38 THE ERRORS OF THE PAST 



the State that even the extreme sociaUsts have to 

 admit that the standard of efficiency and rate of 

 production is highest on the large estates — and this 

 in a country where efficiency is generally high, 

 and the output per acre exceeds ours by 75 per 

 cent. 



If our landowners are to attain a similar stan- 

 dard they must receive a thorough training, and 

 learn to run their estates on business lines and make 

 them yield the utmost net profit. It is only by doing 

 this that landowners can avoid being pauperising 

 agents, as they are at present, and exercising in 

 consequence a harmful effect upon all the people 

 employed on their estates. The slackness of estate 

 labourers is notorious, and berths on an estate are 

 referred to among them as " soft jobs." But this 

 slackness, which is a moral as well as an economic 

 evil, is, together with the system of ludicrously 

 low rents for the land, the inevitable result of 

 having landowners who are completely out of 

 touch with the practical details of their calling 

 and see nothing incongruous in inheriting a pro- 

 fession ! 



If the landower is properly trained to the pro- 

 fession he will make more money out of his estate. 

 If he makes more money out of it he will have 

 more money to spend on its development, and so the 

 whole district and through it the country would 

 benefit. And as example is better than precept, he 

 should make whatever land he farms a demonstra- 

 tion of profitable farming so that his tenants if they 

 choose can see what the application of certain 

 principles to the land can do. 



Few of our landowners have any conception of 

 what an estate properly run should pay them. 



