COMPENSATION FOR PLANTING FRUIT 59 



has obtained a return for the work he has done ; but 

 cases are not unknown when the rigour of the law has 

 been enforced and the outgoing tenant has got nothing 

 from the improvements he has made. It has always 

 been a grievance in Kent that the Agricultural Holdings 

 Act gives the tenant no compensation for fruit planted 

 and brought to bearing, the landlord's argument being 

 that he ought not to be saddled with the necessity of 

 finding what would often be a considerable sum per 

 acre, when he has no security that a new tenant will 

 pay him an adequate rent on the improvement. By 

 the Evesham custom, which is incorporated in the 

 Market Garden Holdings Act, the tenant owns the 

 standing fruit trees and may sell his interest in them 

 to a new tenant, whom he can propose to his landlord 

 at the old rent. If the landlord declines the new 

 tenant, he must himself buy up his tenant's trees at a 

 valuation. To such an agreement most landlords 

 object because it creates a dual form of ownership, 

 and leaves them no longer " masters of their own 

 land." In practice, as we have seen, the tenant takes 

 the risk of planting, and often adds 30 or 40 an acre 

 to the capital value of parts of his holding without any 

 security ; but none the less the existence of the risk 

 does operate, and that the landlord has to be content 

 with a lower rent than would prevail if compensation 

 for improvements was obtainable. 



Owing to the custom of land tenure, the distance 

 of the northern markets, and the South-Eastern Rail- 

 way, which by its inefficiency discounts all the ad- 

 vantages that should come from a geographical 

 proximity to Covent Garden still the best all-round 

 market in the country the Kentish fruit-grower is 

 handicapped in comparison with men in the Evesham 

 or Wisbech districts ; and it is noticeable that the 



