192 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 



Mr Nunneley puts this well : " In my own district I 

 can point to farm after farm which has been run down 

 and practically ruined by the outgoing tenants, who 

 have yet been enabled to claim compensation in con- 

 siderable sums for improvements. On the other hand, I 

 can point to many a good farmer who has farmed well, 

 and has lost a considerable sum of money, who has left 

 a very large amount for his successor and his landlord." 



This double robbery, of the land first, and then of the 

 landlord, is further explained by Mr Rutherford : " The 

 man who is up in his business as a ' land sucker ' may 

 be using a great amount of cake, and at the same time 

 be using sulphate of ammonia or nitrate of soda. He 

 is practically exhausting at the same time as he is 

 putting fertility in. To give compensation to that man 

 would be ridiculous compared with the man who had 

 been boning his place, and causing increased fertility." 



Under the present Act, which the landlord can only 

 use if it is first set in motion by the tenant making a 

 claim, it is possible to rob the soil with practical im- 

 punity, if the bad farmer is content with that, and does 

 not proceed to try to rob his landlord also. 



It is matter of demonstration that it would be to the 

 interest of the owner of land to have his land improved 

 in all ways which make it a more productive and more 

 valuable instrument of agriculture, to have the highest 

 and most thorough cultivation carried on continuously, 

 throughout and up to the end of a tenancy, and that the 

 restrictions and limitations, and faulty administration of 

 the Act which make so many tenancies consist partly 

 of a long process of restoring condition, and partly of a 

 diligent extraction of fertility to be put in the tenant's 

 pockets, to make good the compensation which is denied 

 him, bring with them the natural and inevitable results 

 of economic blundering of the worst kind, and constitute 

 year by year an immense waste of national wealth. I 

 am therefore of opinion that such an amendment of the 

 law as will secure at once freedom to carry out all suit- 

 able improvements, and full compensation for such im- 

 provements to the tenant executing them, cannot but be 



