ISLE OF AXHOLME 283 



no longer be bound down to 12s a week, harvest wages, 

 eighteenpenny cottages, and rood allotments. If the 

 best labour is to be retained for agricultural work there 

 must be reasonable opportunities for men to raise them- 

 selves little by little, by getting land to cultivate, or by 

 working up a small stock of cattle, or by poultry, eggs, 

 or milk. 



And the transition to the new state of things will not 

 lessen, but increase, the supply of labour for carrying on 

 the work of the larger farms economically and effectively. 

 The interests of the two classes are not antagonistic, but 

 bound together, and the movement of the time, checked 

 like everything else in agriculture for the moment by the 

 acutcr stages of depression, must inevitably in the long 

 run, when times get better, not only tend to raise the 

 condition of the rural population, but to bring to agri- 

 culture a more thorough organisation, a more eagerly 

 competing enterprise, and a higher degree of prosperity 

 than has ever hitherto been known. 



To deal with some of the typical cases brought 

 before us. 



In the Isle of Axholme, small holders have had 

 exceptional advantages and exceptional drawbacks. 

 The land is rich and workable, but from that very 

 reason there has been too keen competition, too eager 

 desire to acquire land at any price, and with capital 

 borrowed on almost any terms.^ The small owners have 

 suffered most, not because their labour and industry 

 have been fruitless, but because they have discounted the 

 future too freely, and imposed on themselves, in the 

 interest on mortgages, a rent which, at current prices, 

 even that rich soil could not pay. Interest does not 

 generally admit of remissions like rent. Where 

 mortgagees have abstained from exacting the full 

 interest, it has remained as an arrear of debt to be 

 cleared "off in better times. 



1 In the "seventies" good land ranged up to £120, and inferior to ;^6o 

 an acre. Confidence in rising values was so great that a man who could 

 pay a deposit of 10 per cent, only could borrow the balance without diffi- 

 culty. 



