TRANSACTIONS OP SECTION P. 583 



every year. With the exception of heavy clay, nearly any type of soil is 

 suitable for small farming. 



If areas of not less than 1,000 acres are bought nearness to a station is not 

 essential as the colony would be large enough to afford social amenities of its 

 own and to organise a system of motor transport. The settler under proper 

 guidance should make a good living off twenty-five to thirty acres in the case of 

 a small farm and off five to ten acres in a fruit-growing and market-gardening 

 district. As in the case of the Small-holdings Act, compulsory clauses will be 

 necessary but probably would rarely be resorted to. 



A certain amount of land would have to be taken from sitting tenants. 

 There are many men holding two or three separate farms with aggregate area 

 of from 2,000 to 5,000 acres, in districts well suited to small farming; for the 

 general good it would be quite legitimate to reduce the area held by these large 

 farmers. 



3. Suitability of ex-Service Men as Cultivators of the Soil. — It is the opinion 

 of many in this country that to be a successful small-holder, a man must have 

 been brought up on the land ; but that this conclusion is altogether unsound has 

 been proved by the settlemonts in the United States and in our Colonies of 

 urban artisans, which have succeeded admirably. But the conditions of settle, 

 ment for men without previous agricultural training must be entirely different 

 from the conditions under which trained agriculturists can fairly succeed. 



There is no example up to the present time in the United Kingdom of a 

 carefully thought-out land settlement scheme where the fundamental principles 

 necessary to success have been observed. Settlements of ex-Service men can be 

 successful only where the right conditions have been created. 



4. Conditions of Settlement. — ^Certain guiding principles must be observed 

 which have met with unvarying success wherever scientific land settlement has 

 been undertaken. They are : 



1. Ownership rather than tenancy. 



2. Easy access to capital. 



3. Settlement in colonies rather than in isolated units. 



4. Effective expert guidance. 



5. Co-operation, or at all events organised buying and selling. 



6. The initial years must be made as easy as possible financially. 



5. Machinery. — If ex-Service men are to be settled satisfactorily it is quite 

 clear that they will have to be treated differently from the ordinary applicants 

 for small-holdings. 



As has been pointed out, in most cases they will be without agricultural 

 knowledge, and therefore will require special conditions. The conditions advo- 

 cated should from the point of view of securing efficiency be created for all 

 settlers, but in the case of the ex-Service men they must be created or the 

 movement will end in failure. 



The County Councils, in settling small-holders, have paid little or no atten- 

 tion to the principles enumerated above, and which should be observed in all 

 land settlement. The Small-holdings Act has not proved itself to be a Land 

 Settlement Act. 



Under it many tradesmen have been given a bit of accommodation land, or 

 men already holding some land have obtained additional land, but the number 

 of new cultivators placed on newly-equipped holdings is very small — only 754 up 

 to the end of January 1914. 



County Councils ought not to be asked to undertake this work. Few 

 members of their Small-holdings Committees have in any way studied or 

 understood the problem of land settlement. This work of settlement should be 

 carried out by a Land Settlement Commission composed of highly qualified men 

 and in many ways analogous to the existing Development Commission. 



This Commission would naturally concern itself with settlement in the 

 United Kingdom, possibly only England and Wales. But the question of settle- 

 ment in the United Kingdom should not be kept in a watertight compartment. 

 There should be another Commission or Committee possessing advisory and 

 consultative powers only, which would review the question of land settlement 

 throughout the Empire and endeavour to bring about an understanding between 



