124 WHAT ACTION IS PRACTICABLE 



for a year or more while the reclamation process is 

 going on and until the industries have time to readjust 

 themselves to the new conditions. The necessary 

 preliminary to serious work in the way of reclamation 

 is to give the State power to take over whatever areas 

 of waste and undeveloped land it needs, by some process 

 more rapid and more equitable than the cumbrous 

 machinery of the ordinary compulsory purchase clause, 

 which puts the State at the mercy of a court of arbi- 

 trators who have been brought up to regard the mono- 

 poly value of land as sacred and the need of the public 

 for the land as the chief factor in making up its price. 

 For this purpose the State should have the same 

 immediate powers as it possesses under the Defence 

 of the Realm Act, and the basis of compensation to the 

 interests concerned must be the loss they suffer by 

 being deprived of the land, not their prospective gain 

 whenever some better use can be found for it. 



In these two ways we may hope to deal with the urgent 

 problem of unemployment after the war ; for the future 

 development of the land we must begin with a policy of 

 free experiment. A few people who have studied the 

 question may be convinced of the economy of the large 

 industrial farm and of the opportunity it affords for 

 the heightened utilization of the land and for improving 

 the conditions of employment, but the case for this 

 method of working cannot be regarded as demonstrated 

 at large. This statement is equally true of the small- 

 holding colony worked on co-operative lines; their 

 practicability has still to be proved. Let the State, 

 then, set on foot a limited number of each of these 

 ventures on different classes of land and in different 

 parts of the country ; in a few years it will be possible 



