REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON THE FRUIT INDUSTRY. 531 



owners of their plantations and market gardens. The fruit grower 

 expends large sums of money on his holding in improvements which are 

 permanent, or at least likely to last for a considerable time, and, if he is 

 successful, he adds immensely to its value. In this respect his position 

 is very different from that of the ordinary agricultural tenant, in whose 

 case permanent improvements are usually made by the landlord. The 

 ideal solution of the difficulty would be that every fruit grower should 

 be the owner of the soil. Many of the witnesses before the Committee 

 spoke of the advantages of " small holdings," and the great development 

 of the Wisbech district was largely attributed to the fact that the 

 growers had been able in most cases to buy their holdings. Men started 

 by acquiring four or five acres under mortgage, which was generally 

 paid off after a time, and, in many cases, the owner ended by erecting a 

 small house on his land. In the Blairgowrie district a syndicate bought 

 an estate as recently as 1902, and cut up 205 acres of it into small 

 holdings of five to twenty^five acres each : these have, for the most part, 

 been acquired by working men at a price of £50 an acre, payable by 

 instalments, and already 150 acres of the land have been planted. 

 There can be no doubt, also, but that the acquisition of land for small 

 holdings would be much facilitated by the establishment of a cheaper 

 method of conveyance than at present exists. Several witnesses advocated 

 a measure of State-aided purchase of small holdings, on the lines of the 

 Bill brought in by Mr. Jesse Collings last session. Without venturing 

 to pronounce any opinion on the details of Mr. Collings's proposal, the 

 Committee hold that the passing of some such measure would be an 

 immense advantage to the fruit industry. 



39. There is another aspect of the question, however, in cases where 

 the planting is done by the landlord. This occasionally occurs on a 

 holding under the Market Gardeners' Compensation Acts, but not very 

 frequently. In this case the Committee have heard two opposite views 

 expressed : first, that the landlord should be entitled to nothing but the 

 recoupment of the original value of the trees ; and, secondly, that he 

 should take over the trees without compensating the tenant for the 

 cultivation of them. Both these views appear to be extreme, and the 

 Committee consider that the fair course, in such a case, is for the landlord 

 to raise the rent (though, perhaps, not immediately) by such an amount 

 as would yield him a reasonable percentage on his outlay, and that, on 

 the termination of the tenancy, the valuation for compensation should be 

 made in the same way as in other cases, but that from the amount thus 

 determined there should be subtracted the landlord's expenditure in 

 planting. The planting of trees by the landlord for his tenant is, 

 however, of more frequent occurrence in cases where the land is 

 not rented as a market garden, and this applies to the greater portion of 

 the orchards throughout the West of England, and generally, indeed, to 

 farm orchards throughout the country. In the Western counties, 95 per 

 cent., or more, of the fruit is to be found in grass orchards. In view of 

 the amount of fruit thus grown, and the deplorable state of most of the 

 orchards, the Committee consider that this subject demands the earnest 

 attention of landowners. 



