314 AGRICULTURAL DEPRESSION 



large sums in increasing the fertility of the soil, 

 is unable to obtain in most cases a reduction of 

 rent in fair proportion to the fall in prices, for 

 the reason that his farm is coveted by other 

 competitors — a competition all the keener in bad 

 times, when farms in high condition are fewer, 

 and therefore more eagerly sought for. 



(16.) The results of this state of things have been grave 

 insecurity of tenure, constant discouragement to 

 high farming up to the end of a tenancy, and 

 serious injustice to the very class of farmers who 

 most deserve the protection of the law. 



(17.) The attempt made in the Agricultural Holdings 

 Act for England, and the similar Act for Scot- 

 land, to give greater security to tenant farmers in 

 bargaining with their landlords, and fuller and 

 more easily enforceable property rights in their 

 improvements, and thus to check or remedy some 

 of the evils resulting from the existing system of 

 land tenure has largely failed. 



(18.) The chief causes of the comparative failure of 

 the Act have been (a) that no suitable machinery 

 was provided to carry out the Act ; it was left to 

 the old type of valuer and the old methods of 

 valuation, with the result that the main purpose 

 of the Act, to give the tenant the full remaining 

 value of his improvements, has been largely 

 frustrated ; {b) that compensation was restricted 

 to quitting tenants and no provision made to 

 protect the interests of sitting tenants, with the 

 result that the best type of farmers have been 

 constantly compelled to acquiesce in rents which 

 transfer the tenant's interests in the soil to the 

 landlord. 



(19.) These perversions and limitations of the Act 

 have operated to encourage bad and defective 

 farming, and to discourage the thorough and 

 generous and persistent cultivation and fertilising 

 of the soil, and have placed the most deserving 

 class of agriculturists — those who have steadily 



