8 GROWTH OF POPULATION 



which permits a certain advance of the standard of living 

 to be maintained for a period of, say, four or five years, 

 any subsequent reduction of that standard of living is 

 strongly resisted. 



Now cultivators are a class of agricultural workers who 

 in addition to laboring themselves undertake the risks of 

 the success of their agriculture. The standard of living 

 which they reach operates in exactly the same way to 

 maintain their earnings. The cultivator carefully calculates 

 what he is likely to be able to realize from crops upon land 

 he proposes to rent and what his expenses of cultivating will 

 be. In competing to rent more land a cultivator will not, 

 as a rule, offer more rent than can be paid according to his 

 estimate without reducing their average earnings. His 

 average earnings during the past few years usually deter- 

 mine pretty closely the standard of living adopted by a man ; 

 and when a class of people has become accustomed to a 

 certain standard of living, there will not be higher bids 

 of rent than will enable them to maintain their accustomed 

 standard of living. Whilst this is generally true, it has to 

 be remembered that in every community there are persons 

 incapable of making a careful estimate, and others who are 

 over-sanguine or of reckless temperament who will offer any 

 figure however high in order to obtain the particular piece of 

 land on which they have set their fancy. One of the evils of 

 letting land to the highest bidder is that good cultivators are 

 turned out in favor of such men, who exhaust their resources 

 in two or three years and desert the holding, leaving it in 

 an impoverished condition. Where lettings are made without 

 auction, however, the level of rents is determined, other things 

 being equal, by the standard of living. The qualification 

 "other things being equal" is of course very important ; for 

 in actual practice other things never remain the same. It 

 will be found that rents do actually rise at the same time that 



