1100 



The New Farming Landowner. 



[Mar., 



essential part of the process of manufacturing cultivable land 

 because, even if the trees had been felled, and the roots and 

 the underwood and the briars and brambles rooted up, and the 

 swamps drained, the land would be of no use to the farmer 

 unless it had been supplied with farm buildings, houses, 

 cottages, fences, roads, and a proper supply of water. All this 

 equipment as well as the reclamation itself has been supplied 

 by the capital of the landowner. The capital the tenant 

 farmer has supplied is that necessary for the wage fund and 

 for the purchase of live and dead stock. 



If anyone doubts the accuracy of my statement about the 

 manufacture of English land he should pay a visit to the famous 

 Experimental Station at Eothamsted. There he will find that 

 60 years ago a corner of a wheat field was enclosed and left 

 alone, and it has never been touched by the hand of man 

 since. That plot of ground has reverted to the natural state 

 of England, brambles, briars, underwood and young forest 

 trees, and Dr. Kussell, the Director of the Experimental 

 Station, has informed me that to clear that piece of land 

 and make it once again fit for cultivation would cost more than 

 the capital value of the land itself. 



It may well be asked why the landowners were prepared to 

 invest their money so unremuneratively in agricultural land. 

 The only possible answer is, that the habit must date from the 

 days when the possession of land brought a social status nothing 

 else could bring, and real political power. It could not have 

 been the mere desire to live in the country, or the wish for 

 sport, because men have always been able to enjoy the 

 amenities of country life and sport by the process of hire. 

 Purchase was not essential for the purpose. Nowadays the 

 possession of land brings with it no political power, and social 

 status can be acquired by other means, and the custom of 

 land ownership, which was dying hardly, has been shattered 

 by the crushing weight of war taxation. Landowners who 

 were not farming their own land have found that by selling 

 that land they can double their income, partly by the increased 

 yield of their new investment, and partly because they become 

 released from those charges and outgoings which make the 

 net return from the rent, of agricultural land so much less to the 

 owner than the gross return. This is the simple explanation 

 of the reason why there have been such great sales in the last 

 few years. The new, and hitherto unknown, feeling of 

 insecurity thereby produced to the tenant farmer has been the 



