CONFERENCE ON FRUIT GROWING. 



47 



capital paying nothing. The incidence of local taxation needs in some way 

 to be extended. 



Land is really the raw material : it is the equivalent to the farmer of 

 wool to the cloth manufacturer, or corn to the miller. 



Farmers pay very much more Poor rate in proportion to income 

 than merchants, professional men, manufacturers, and persons with 

 private incomes. Mr. H. Biddell, of East Suffolk, gives the following 

 example : — 



" A farmer farming a thousand acres of land with a rent of £1,200 a 

 year is assessed by the Government upon one-third of his rent, that 

 amount being estimated by the Government as the amount of his income. 

 A farmer farming a thousand acres of land would have about £8,000 

 capital. The interest on that amount of capital, taken at 5 per cent., 

 would work out at £400 a year, and that was exactly the Government 

 estimate of what the farmer would obtain as his income from the 

 land. He thought that it would work out that a farmer with a rental 

 of £1,200 might be taken as having an income of £400 a year, 

 but that farmer would have to pay rates on about £600 a year. 

 His land would be rated at about £1,000, and his house and his 

 buildings at a little more than £100. He would have to pay rates on 

 half the rateable value of the land and on the house and buildings. 

 But the manufacturer, the tradesman, or the business man, with the in- 

 come of £400 a year, would, in all probability, be occupying a house at 

 about £40 or £50 a year, and factory at about £50 or £60. In that case 

 his total rent would be something like £120 a year, and the rateable 

 value would be about £100 a year. A professional man with an income 

 of £400 will probably spend about £60 on his house, and is only rated 

 on that amount. Thus the farmer with the income of £400 a year 

 would be rated at £600, and the manufacturer or tradesman with the 

 same income would be rated at only £100 a year, whilst the case of 

 the professional man afforded a still greater contrast, for he only pays 

 on about one-eighth or one-tenth part of his income. 



" Thus with the same income, allowing for the half rates on agri- 

 cultural land, the farmer would pay on £600, the manufacturer on £100, 

 and the professional man on £60 ; or, expressed in another way, the 

 farmer pays rates on 150 per cent, of his income, the tradesman on 

 25 per cent, of his income, and the professional man on 12 per cent, cf 

 his income." 



Again, looked at from another standpoint, suppose each householder 

 spends one-sixth of his income on house-rent, the farmer is found to be 

 rated on many times more than one-sixth of his income. 



Although the prices of farm produce tend year by year to decrease and 

 the cost of labour to increase, yet the rates on farms have increased in 

 spite of the Agricultural Eates Act, and tend to increase year by year ; 

 that the burden of rates on land should thus increase yearly is unjust 

 and unfair, it is squeezing the farmer between the upper and nether 

 millstone. Perhaps the chief benefit the farmer gets from the poor rate 

 is the use of the roads ; but brewers, millers, and steam haulage con- 

 tractors use the roads equally and with greater damage without being 

 rated as heavily as the farmer is in proportion to profits. 



