ITS CAUSE AND REMEDY 29 



of his neighbor. When I was a boy I went 

 to school in France and many times have 

 I inscribed my name on beautiful crumbling 

 Grecian columns covered with moss and 

 ivy, the relics of once beautiful mansions 

 owned by the wealthy patrician class. But 

 the peasant class became so abjectly poor 

 and without homes that the French Revolu- 

 tion broke forth with an av^ul fury, and 

 these wealthy land owners were slain with 

 the guillotine, the land became divided in 

 small holdings and the largest portion of 

 France became tillers of the soil or agricul- 

 turists and ever since that abandonment of 

 the law of primogenitor caused by the revo- 

 lution the land has been subdivided into 

 very small holdings and the very tenacious 

 way the French people fought for France 

 during this war is partly because nearly 

 every soldier was interested in a small piece 

 of land that was his own home. We hear 

 of people wanting to place our returned sol- 

 diers on the land either on reclaimed land 

 by irrigation or cleared off stump land or 

 large holdings bought by the government 

 and parcelled out to the returned soldiers 

 and sailors 



But here is a great problem to solve : The 

 people already on the land are not nearly 

 as prosperous as they should be, and in 

 spite of the fact that the Hatch Bill was 

 passed about 45 years ago with a view of 

 improving the condition of our farmers, the 



