NO EXPLANATIONS AND NO REMEDIES 323 



In the Majority Report there is nowhere anj' adequate 

 appreciation of the disastrous effects upon agriculture of the 

 policy of diverting the working capital of the tenant farmer 

 from its proper application, the thorough cultivation of the 

 soil, to the making up of rents, which have, by the fall of 

 prices, lost their economic basis, and now assign to the land- 

 lord a wholly unfair proportion of the proceeds of the land. 



The Report thus leaves out of sight, and practically 

 excludes from consideration, some of the most serious 

 economic elements of the situation. 



While describing a disastrous condition of things in many 

 parts of the country, it substantially fails to give the true or 

 any complete explanation of how things got into so bad a 

 state. Further, in consequence of this limited and one-sided 

 inspection of the facts, the report also fails, and necessarily 

 must fail, in making any suggestions or recommendations 

 which would have adequate effect and reach the real sources 

 of the evil. As it leaves out real explanations, so it leaves 

 out real remedies. 



The really essential problem to solve is to enable a tenant 

 farmer of average capacity and average capital to earn out 

 of the land the minimum profit which will encourage men 

 in his position to cultivate it properly. This result, with 

 falling and uncertain prices for agricultural produce, is, on 

 some land and in some districts, not to be attained under 

 any conditions which the State can provide by legislative or 

 administrative help, or which landowner or tenant can bring 

 about. 



But the evidence taken by this Commission shows that it 

 could be attained in many parts even of the worst districts, 

 if the real causes of agricultural distress were honestly faced 

 and dealt with. 



Such portions of our evidence as Mr Hunter Pringle's 

 graphic history and analysis of the ruin of parts of Essex, 

 where many landlords spent too little in equipping their 

 estates with improvements in the good times, and when bad 

 times came, did not reduce rents till the bankruptcy and 

 disappearance of one tenant after another, and consequent 

 deterioration of the soil, compelled them to reduce rents ; 

 and, again, in Scotland, such evidence as Mr George Riddell's 

 description of the too frequent treatment of the improving 

 tenant, conclusively establish that the really essential feature 

 Df the agricultural depression, and the chief of those causes 



