84 ESTATE MANAGEMENT 



External Development 



Agriculture is tending to become more and more com- 

 mercial, which means to say that an ever larger proportion 

 of the produce of the farm is being sold in more or Jess 

 distant markets, the cultivator utilising the money so 

 obtained to purchase his requirements. It is to his advantage 

 to specialize in growing just those crops for which the soil 

 and climate of the estate are particularly suited ; and it 

 may be to his advantage even to sell nearly the whole of 

 the produce of his fields, and to buy from the nearest market 

 town the food which he requires. In any case the prosperity 

 of the tenants will depend greatly upon their being able to 

 dispose of the strictly commercial crops, such as cotton, 

 sugar, tobacco and others to the best advantage. 

 For this reason the landlord would be rendering 

 a great service to the tenants, and incidentally would be 

 improving the rental value of his estate, by doing everything 

 possible to secure improved communications by road, 

 railway and river with the big markets of the country. He 

 should carefully study the situation of his estate in relation 

 to main roads and to railways ; he should seek to induce 

 the District Board to make pucca roads which will bear 

 heavy cart traffic connecting some points on his estate with 

 a railway station and also with a main road. If his property 

 is extensive and the crops are valuable, either through the 

 fertility of his soil or the use of canal water, it may very likely 

 be advantageous to offer the District Board to pay half the 

 cost of constructing the necessary road or even, in case of 

 refusal, to bear the entire cost of making three or four miles 

 of metalled road himself. Where the cost of metalled roads 

 is excessively high owing to the absence of any local source 

 of road metal, it may be more advantageous to connect the 

 estate with the nearest railway station by means of a light 

 railway or tramway of 2' or 2' 6" gauge, as has been done 



