294 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 



for all time with the top rent the land could fetch at the 

 highest point of prices and prosperity. And the loss is 

 still harder to meet if the buyer is paying, not with 

 savings, but with borrowed money. The result is fixity 

 of tenure at a rent increasingly unfair, and too often 

 complicated embarrassments and loss owing to lack of 

 ready money. 



It is obvious that the ultimate result for those who 

 are in a position to hold on depends upon prices right- 

 ing themselves. There can be no doubt that if prices 

 and times improve, those who pull through till then will 

 certainly have as bright a future as any class of agricul- 

 turists, and will have this advantage over tenants, that 

 they will be able to reap the full gain of the good times, 

 which, in the case of tenant farmers, will be shared with 

 or appropriated by the landlords. 



Perhaps the greatest obstacle to small holdings is the 

 lack of capital which prevents landowners frommakingand 

 equipping small farms, and labourers from stocking them. 

 Loans on cheap terms are needed to enable landlords to 

 meet the outlay on buildings and other improvements.^ 

 In Cumberland and Westmoreland, farm servants are 

 frequently enabled to start farming and climb up by the 

 landlord stocking the land with sheep, at 4 or 5 per cent, 

 additional rent on their value. For the small tenants, 

 credit banks might be useful machinery as in Germany, 

 or there might be some simple form of loaning State 

 money through the Post Office. 



In this connection the evidence given by Mr Wolff as 

 to the success of co-operative credit banks for agricul- 

 turists in Germany and Italy is of great practical signi- 

 ficance. The development of any such system as that 

 of the Raiffeisen or Luzzatti banks in England must in- 

 evitably be slow. Their success clearly has depended, on 

 the Continent, on the slow evolution in the leaders of this 

 co-operative movement of a special type of knowledge of 

 accounts and of human nature and affairs. These things are 



^ Mr R. Roberts shows that the additional rent obtainable from smaller 

 holdings would more than pay interest on a Government Loan. Wilson 

 Fox, Lincoln, App. B, 13. 



