148 Large and Small Holdings 



price set by the arbitrator practically split the difference between the 

 price or rent asked by the vendor and the price or rent offered by 

 the Council. 



The state of affairs does not look quite so satisfactory when the 

 number of applications for holdings is compared with the number 

 actually created. In 1909 the County Councils received 3157 appli- 

 cations for land which altogether amounted to 54,572 acres. But of 

 these applications only 1770 were approved, for an area of 26,611 

 acres 1 . Conclusions by no means favourable to the practicability of 

 the Act have often been drawn from these facts, and more especially 

 from particular cases where applications have been refused. In 

 many circles and among many politicians the view predominates that 

 the administration of the Act is not being adequately carried out, and 

 that its success is in this way being imperilled. A not unimportant 

 movement has in the course of 1909 taken shape in the Land Club 

 League 2 , an organisation whose aim is avowedly to improve and 

 accelerate the working of the Small Holdings Act. At a meeting of 

 the League on March 4, 1909, complaints were heard from various 

 quarters to the effect that County Councils had refused many perfectly 

 justifiable applications, and had shown altogether too much tender- 

 ness for the interests of the landlords and holders of sporting rights, 

 while the Board of Agriculture had often remained inactive, so that 

 the law, excellent in itself, could only succeed in meeting a fraction 

 of the real demand 3 . The Board of Agriculture seems itself to be 

 conscious that some such view is widely held : for its latest Report 

 (1910) contains the following significant remark : " We think that in 

 the great majority (sic) of cases there is no justification whatever 

 for the view that hostility or apathy exists on the part of those 

 responsible for the administration of the Act 4 ." In spite of this 

 denial, the impression remains that the Small Holdings Commissioners 

 are attempting to defend themselves against complaints of which they 

 are very clearly conscious. 



It would certainly be unjust to complain of the administrators of 

 the Act simply because they have refused certain applications for 

 land. Undoubtedly it is in many cases difficult, and even impossible, 

 at once to meet the demand for small holdings. Undoubtedly too in 



1 Annual Report on Small Holdings, Pt. I, 1910, p. 24. 



2 See The Land Club Movement, a descriptive pamphlet issued by the Land Club League, 

 2nd ed. 1910. 



3 See the League's periodical, Our Land and Land Club News, Feb. 1910, pp. 9-11. 



4 Annual Report on Small Holdings, 1910, p. 18. 



