98 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 



it is from the landlord." " The reductions represent 

 nothing like the fall in prices, not one farmer I know is 

 making his rent." 



Even Mr Mercer, who thinks rents have little to do 

 with depression, admits, " We are not making any money 

 at the present time, and that is why the man without 

 capital is bound now to go." 



A Hampshire farmer, quoted by Dr Fream, gives as 

 one of the causes " of the present ruinous condition of 

 our industry, the disinclination and refusal of landlords 

 in most cases to meet their tenants. Some, not all, are 

 now offering 15 or 20 per cent, abatements. When, as 

 in the last two years, more than the rent has been lost, 

 this is too little. In seasons like the last two, 50 per 

 cent, should be allowed to tenants of a few years' 

 standing, to enable them to hold on." This man, whose 

 family had been tenants for two centuries on the same 

 eslate, has since sold off, being unable to make the 

 farm pay. 



There is much evidence to show that reductions 

 are by no means universal, and that in many districts 

 and on many estates the system of temporary remissions 

 or abatements, sometimes wholly insufficient to meet 

 the times, is still common. In many cases, even in 

 districts where depression is general, there would seem 

 to have been neither reductions, nor abatements of any 

 kind. 



Mr Albert Pell points out the hardship of the abate- 

 ment system to tenants who are thus deprived of any 

 reduction of the assessment of their farms to local rates, 

 and are kept under unfair pressure from excessive rates. 

 The same complaint comes from North Wales. 



Other witnesses condemn the abatement system as 

 keeping tenants in a disheartening uncertainty in bad 

 times, as tending to demoralise them, and to check 

 outlay or effort in improving farms, and as inducing men 

 who have been losing money to hang on and lose more. 

 Again, the tenant, it is pointed out, is left wholly at the 

 mercy of his landlord, who may, if occasion or wish 

 arises, reimpose upon him with )ut notice the old rent, 



