Review of Bevicw!'. 1112113. 



TOPICS OF THE MONTH. 



967 



Unrating of improvements on farms 

 and holdings. 



Co-operation and agricultural educa- 

 tion. 



Transit facilities for produce and 

 abolition of preferential railway 

 rates on foreign imports. 



Lord Beauchamp, who took the chair 

 at the meetings, where Mr. George de- 

 fined his land policy, stated that they 

 were not there as private individuals, but 

 as official representatives of the Govern- 

 ment, and the Chancellor referred to the 

 fact that Mr. Asquith had expressly 

 authorised him to institute the land en- 

 quiry. This he said was no unauthorised 

 progfamme, but a policy on which hung 

 the fate of Liberalism. 



Mr. George made many startling state- 

 ments in the course of his carefully pre- 

 pared speeches. liome Rule, he said, 

 and Welsh Disestablishment were settled 

 issues. The land controls life in all its 

 aspects, and the reform of the methods 

 of governing the land is now the main 

 issue. Landlords have greater power 

 than the king or the judges. It is only 

 during the last 40 years that their un- 

 fettered control of the land has been in 

 any way restricted. 



REFORM IN 500 YEARS ! 



The Tories, he said, now admit that 

 the land system of England is a ghastly 

 failure. The remedy they suggest is pur- 

 chase — buy out the landlords. The 

 Tory organiser, Mr. Steel ALaitland, says 

 that land can only be bought at the 

 rate of two millions a year. This means 

 it will take 500 years before the purchase 

 is complete. So the Tory idea of land 

 reform is land reform in 500 years ! 

 England has the best soil in the old 

 world, yet there are fewer workers on it 

 than anywhere else in Europe. This is 

 not due to free-trade, for in Holland 

 there are four times as many land 

 workers per acre as in England, in Bel- 

 gium three times, and in Denmark twice 

 as many. 



THE CURSE OF GAME. 



Every European country has realised, 

 said the Chancellor, that the most im- 

 portant thing for defensive purposes is 



to get a large, strong, robust population 

 on the soil. In the whole of England, 

 with a population of 36,000,000, only 

 1,500,000 workers are on the soil. There 

 were 2,000,000 sixty years ago, when the 

 population was 18,000,000! During that 

 time the number of gamekeepers had 

 risen from 9000 to 33,000 ! 



Agriculture had a bad blow undoubt- 

 edly, but what has the great capitalist 

 done for agriculture? He has trebled 

 the number of his gamekeepers, he has 

 enormously increased the number of 

 pheasants which have been turned on to 

 the land. But that is not the way to 

 help the great industry through its diffi- 

 culties. Mr. George pointed out some of 

 tne worst features of the land system, 

 and referred to the terrible condition of 

 those who till the soil. Wretched dwell- 

 ings, shocking wages and hopeless 

 conditions generally. But it was rather 

 upon the huge uncultivated areas of 

 magnificent land that the Chancellor 

 had most to say. Not only is rich land 

 ne\'er tilled, but there is no country in 

 the world where cultivated, even highly 

 cultivated land, is so over-run, and so 

 continuously damaged by game. 



When a business gets into a 

 thoroughly bad condition through long 

 }'ears of mismanagement, it is no use 

 tinkering it here and mending there. It 

 must be entirely recast and put on a 

 thoroughly good basis. That is what 

 the Liberal Party proposes to do with 

 the great monopoly in land. 



One important remedy was definitely 

 promised, that an end must be put to the 

 system by which certain railway com- 

 panies gave preference to foreign pro- 

 duce. The appointment of a Royal 

 Commission on Railways, which was 

 announced a few days later, and which 

 is to include the possibility of national- 

 isation, gives point to this promise of a 

 much-needed reform. 



A MINISTRY OF LANDS. 



At Swindon a much fuller and more 

 definite programme was laid down. A 

 Ministry of Lands is to be set up. It is 

 to absorb all the functions of the Board 

 of Agriculture, to undertake the registra- 

 tion of title and land transfer, to take 



