500 



THE GAB DE NEBS' CHRONICLE. 



[Novembeb 3, 1888. 



ism. But, as I have said, there is no reason to 

 fear that too many farmers will become market 

 gardeners and fruit growers, and there will be all 

 the less reason to expect this if, as I believe, a turn 

 in the tide of ordinary farming as a business has 

 set in — whether for a long or for a short period it 

 would be rash to predict. The fear is — to confine 

 myself to fruit-growing — that, in spite of the 

 " boom " which appears to have been started in that 

 industry, its development will be slower than is 

 desirable. There are many reasons why it should 

 be so. Enough has been said in recent years, 

 and said over and over again, to prove that it is 

 desirable to grow more fruit, and especially more 

 choice Apples and Pears, in this country. The 

 question is — How to do it ? Now, in my opinion, 

 Mr. Rivers, in his speech as Chairman of the Fruit 

 Growers' Conference held the other day in the 

 Crystal Palace, went the right way to work to 

 show how not to do it. Alluding to the obstacles 

 to fruit-growing, he is reported to have said that 

 landlords, land laws, railway rates, and middle- 

 men have nothing to with them. A more astound- 

 ing assertion I have seldom read. In my opinion 

 they have pretty well all to do with them. 

 It is our land laws which render fruit-planting 

 an unsafe speculation, and high railway rates 

 and a bad system of distribution (the middleman 

 element) which renders fruit-growing less pro- 

 fitable than it should be. I think my friend, 

 Mr. Albert Bath, was on the right tack in the 

 paper which he read at the first Crystal Palace 

 Conference, and not Mr. Rivers, who declared 

 ignorance to be the fundamental hindrance to 

 extended fruit culture. No one is a more earnest 

 advocate of agricultural and horticultural educa- 

 tion than I am, and no one is less disposed to say 

 anything to underrate the advantages of either 

 branch of instruction. But, in my opinion, for 

 one cultivator of the soil prevented from growing 

 fruit by ignorance, there are twenty who are de- 

 terred from lack of security to capital invested 

 in planting, high railway rates, which render it 

 unprofitable to grow anything except high-priced 

 ear!y produce if it has to go a long distance by 

 rail, and our abominable system of distribution, 

 which gives more profit to" the middleman for a 

 day's, cr sometimes for an hour's work, in handing 

 fruit on to customers, than to the producer who 

 spends a year in growing it. 



The Land- Laws. 



Returning to the question, How is fruit growing 

 to be increased ? I must pass by, as beyond the 

 range of my subject, all details relating to such 

 obstacles as high rail charges and the middleman's 

 undue share in the amount paid by consumers for 

 fruit. In considering how to answer the question 

 asked, another at once crops up — Who is to plant ? 

 Now our land laws are directly opposed to planting 

 as far as they go. By encouraging limited owner- 

 ship through the settlement of estates they render it 

 disadvantageous to most landowners to plant, 

 because the limited owners, who form the great 

 majority of the landlord class, by sinking their 

 capital in orchard planting, would reap only a tran- 

 sitory benefit themselves, and that only if they lived 

 several years, while they would enrich the already too 

 highly favoured heirs to their land at the expense 

 of their younger children or other relatives. For 

 reasons which it would take me very wide of my 

 mark to-day to state, I am not in favour of 

 increasing the powers and privileges of the owners 

 of land by making them absolute owners, and I 

 allude to limited ownership merely to Bhow that 

 under it there is no reason to expect extensive 

 orchard planting by landlords. We come now to 

 the tenants, and are thus brought within the precise 

 confines of the subject of this paper. 



Mr. Rivers appears to argue that the land laws 

 have nothing to do with the indisposition of culti- 

 vators to plant fruit, because in suitable situations 



and under proper management fruit-planting will 

 pay with laws and rents as they are. No doubt 

 it will, provided that the planter has a long lease, 

 and lives long enough to reap the fruits of his enter- 

 prise, or if — and this is a very large " if" — be can 

 induce his landlord to consent to the planting, so 

 that he will be entitled to compensation under the 

 Agricultural Holdings Act, or to arrange otherwise 

 to compensate him or his heirs when he quits his 

 holding or dies. These " ifs " and " ors," however, 

 are shadowy particles, and a substantial and dis- 

 agreeable " but " nearly always comes in to put them 

 to flight. Without the consent of the landlord in 

 writing the law fails to afford the fruit planter, 

 whether he be a large farmer or an allotment holder, 

 a halfpenny of compensation for capital sunk in the 

 planting of fruit ; and I doubt whether that consent 

 can be obtained by one out of a hundred tenants. 

 The tenant, then, has no legal security for fruit- 

 planting, and if he plants without security he incurs 

 a very serious risk. It may be contended, perhaps, 

 that a long lease affords a sufficient security ; but that 

 I entirely dispute, because a man may die before he 

 has reaped any benefit from his expenditure, and it 

 may ba inconvenient for hi3 executors to carry 

 on his business, or he may be obliged to 

 remove, either from getting into difficulties or 

 from some less disagreeable cause. Therefore 

 a lease is but a delusion as security unless it 

 contains compensation clauses, or embodies a right 

 of assignment. Moreover, a lease never affords 

 adequate security, unless it is a very long one, even 

 if the holder of it farms it out. Even then, at the 

 end of the lease, the improving tenant — or rather, 

 the law — hands over to the landlord property which 

 rightly belongs to himself. 



Cost of Planting. 

 It is not necessary to say before my present 

 audience that the expense of orchard planting is no 

 light one, or to point out some years must elapse 

 before the planter can hope to obtain a satisfactory 

 return on his outlay. Probably there is no gentle- 

 man here who could not tell me a great deal more 

 about the cost of planting than I can tell him. But 

 as there may be readers of this paper who are not 

 experts, and who may like to have the estimates of 

 experts on the cost of planting different kinds of 

 fruit, I submit such estimates. There is no lack of 

 them in print ; but most of those in my possession 

 are two, three, or more years old, and expenses vary 

 with the times. I therefore asked Mr. Charles White- 

 head to give me his estimates for the present time, 

 and I have to thank him, a busy man — though for 

 that matter busy men are generally the most obliging 

 in affording information — for kindly complying with 

 my request. In giving Mr. Whitehead's estimates I 

 must point out that they do not include the cost of 

 preparing the land, or any portion of the rent, tithe, 

 rates, and labour expenses after planting which fall 

 due before the trees come into profit. 



Cost of Planting One Acre of Fruit. 

 Standard Apple trees, 22 feet apart (90 £ s. d. £ s. d. 



trees) 6 



Planting and staking 2 17 6 



8 17 6 



Plums or Damsons, IS feet apart (134 trees) 7 15 

 Planting and staking 3 15 



Apples and Plums, mixed, 20 feet apart 



(108 trees) 7 



Planting and staking 3 5 



Bush fruit trees under Apples, 1410 to the 



acre, 5J feet apart, at 13s. per 100 ... 9 



Planting bush trees 2 15 



Ninety Apples aDd planting and staking ... 8 17 6 



Bush fruit with Plums or Damsons— 1 440 



bu^h fruit trees 9 



Planting ditto 2 15 



13i Plum or Damson trees, and planting 



and slaking 11 15 



Strawberries, 30X 18 inches«ll,616 plants, 



say, 12s. te. per 1000 7 4 



Planting 1 15 



Strawberries, 30X12 inches»17,424 plants, 



at 12s. M 10 18 6 



Planting 2 7 6 



Raspberries, in rows 4 feet apart, three 



plants to a hill or c*ntre<= 10,890 plants 10 17 6 



Planting 2 5 



Mr. Whitehead adds : — " All these rates are 

 according to present cost of fruit trees and present 

 labour wages. The land, of course, must be deeply 

 ploughed, and in many cases a subsoil plough should 

 follow the ordinary plough. Harrowing also is 

 necessary to get a level surface. Upon land in cul- 

 tivation a good dressing of manure would be neces- 

 sary, say 20 ton per acre. Some land would require 

 trenching." 



Mr. Albert Bath, of Sevenoaks, has also kindly 

 sent me some estimates, which represent the actual 

 cost of planting now being carried out under his 

 superintendence : — 



Cost of Manuring, Ploughing. Subsoiling Trees, and Planting, 

 per Acre. 



Apple plantation, trees 20 X 20 feet apart £21 



Plums, 20 X 20 feet 18 16 



Pears about same as Apples 21 



Mixed plantation of Apples, Pears, Plums, 20 

 x 20 feet with bottom fruit— Currants and Goose- 

 berries 35 8 



Raspberries (manuring and cultivation as above, 



excepting subsoiling) 17 5 



Strawberries, ditto 13 7 



Mr. Bath remarks that fruit trees and Raspberry 

 canes are as cheap as they were six years ago, but 

 that Apple trees are in great demand, and will soon 

 be dearer. 



Although the planting of Strawberries and Rasp- 

 berries does not come under the head of orchard 

 planting, the estimates for these crops are allowed to 

 appear in the list. I may add that Mr. William 

 Vinson, of Oipington, Kent, has kindly given his 

 estimates of the cost of planting of an acre of these 

 varieties of soft fruit. Including the first year's 

 cultivation, rent, rates, &c, he says, Raspberries cost 

 about £15 an acre, and Strawberries about £10. 



The veriest outsider must see from these figures — 

 and especially from those relating to orchard planting 

 — that it would be very risky for a tenant to engage 

 in that enterprise without security as to compensa- 

 tion for the unexhausted value of his improvements ; 

 and it is to be borne in mind that Mr. Whitehead's 

 totals should be larger than they are, because they 

 do not include additional expenditure incurred while 

 waiting for the trees and bushes to bear. 



Tenant's Compensation. 



How, then, should compensation be given ? Per- 

 sonally, I am a strong advocate of the plan of allow- 

 ing the tenant to sell his improvements in the market, 

 with preemption to the landlord. Elswhere, and on 

 many occasions, I have shown how I would safe- 

 guard the just claims of landlords in making the 

 necessary arrangements for free sale. There is not 

 time to allow of my going into details upon that 

 topic to-day. Moreover, to do so would be needless 

 repetition, lor are they not written in the chronicles 

 of theFarmers' Alliance — an association which would 

 have done great things for the farmers and fruit 

 growers of the country if they had sufficiently sup- 

 ported it? In my opinion, free sale is far superior 

 to the valuation system. When told that it involves 

 dual ownership in land, I always say, in reply, that 

 where two persons invest their capital, and inex- 

 tricably mix it in the same piece of land, you must 

 have dual ownership or confiscation. There is abso- 

 lutely no other alternative ; and if you have a right 

 to compensation by valuation, you have dual owner- 

 ship just as much as if you have free sale. Again, 

 I am told that free sale has not succeeded in Ireland; 

 but the reply to that is that it was a splendid success 

 in Ulster before Mr. Gladstone meddled with it, and, 

 in my opinion, muddled it. Having visited Ulster, 

 I say that the results of free sale there are wonderful. 

 Considering the disadvantages in respect of situation, 

 climate, and often of soil also, under which the 

 farmers in that province laboured, what they did, 

 stimulated by the security afforded to them by free 

 6ale, long before the Land Acts were passed, is a 

 striking proof of the value of the principle. 



It must be confessed, however, that free sale is not 

 popular in this country. It may further be admitted 

 that the system of compensation by arbitration and 

 valuation can be carried out more satisfactorily in 

 relation to fruit trees than in the case of ordinary 

 farm improvements. The trees are on the ground, 



