108 COMMISSION OF CONSERVATION 



absence of close settlement, and absentee ownership. The president 

 of the Land Surveyors' Association of Australia, in a public memorial, 

 says that there are many large areas of good country privately held 

 and adjacent to existing railway lines which could be acquired by the 

 State, and which are eminently suited for close settlement. He con- 

 demns the policy which has brought about the holding of these large 

 areas of land which are not used to the best advantage, and which has 

 resulted in isolated patches of cultivation with huge intervening areas 

 of untilled land. 



It is well known that speculation in farm land and the holding 

 of large areas of idle lands by private corporations is causing serious 

 evils in the United States. The value of farms in the United States 

 in 1910 was put at $32.40 per acre, as compared with $15.75 per acre 

 in 1900.* Mr. Ethelbert Stewart, Chief Statistician of the Bureau of 

 Labor Statistics, Department of Labor, in giving evidence before a 

 Committee on Labour in June, 1916, said: — 



In my own state, for instance, they are charging $12 and $14 an 

 acre rental. Land that was bought of the government by the present 

 owners for $1.25 per acre now rents for $10 per acre. The land which 

 sold there a few years ago — it seems a few years to me; it was 35 years 

 ago — land which sold there for $50 an acre is now being held at $240 

 an acre, and with all the work I could put on that land at $50, I could 

 not raise the mortgage. You cannot expect men to go back to the 

 land under the present conditions, and you cannot expect them to 

 stay there with the present conditions existing." 



The growth of absentee ownership which accompanies specu- 

 lation is shown by the increase of tenancies. According to 

 the census figures, there were 37 tenant-operated farms in each 100 

 farms in the United States in 1910 as compared with 28 in 1890. 



The kind of tenancy created under the United States system 

 appears to be socially and economically unsound. The United States 

 Commissioner on Industrial Relations reported in 1915: 



"Badly housed, ill-nourished, uneducated and hopeless, these 

 tenants continue year after year to eke out a bare living, moving fre- 

 quently from one farm to another in the hope that something will 

 turn up." 



Here we have the curious anomaly of increasing poverty among 

 farmers side by side with increasing values of farms. There is much 

 to be said in favour of tenancy when the tenant holds under a system 

 of leasehold directly from the Crown, but tenancy under a speculative 

 and absentee landlord system is indefensible. 



Monthly Crop Report, United States Dept. of Agriculture, April 15, 1916. 



