14 
Land & Water 
The Land -III 
July 1 8, 19 1 8 
A series of four articles dealing with the effects of reconstruction on the Land Problem 
WE saw last week that the first great danger 
of State interference, if it were not conducted 
through some well thought-out local machinery, 
would be due to a misunderstandmg of the 
English peasantry, that is, the living organism 
(.f the English %-illage. For the bureaucracy is a thing of 
the new great towns from top to bottom. 
We have to consider this week two other forms of bureau- 
cratic ignorance, which might be almost as bad as the first 
in their effects. These are an ignorance of the complexity 
of aKricultural work, and an ignorance of the length of time 
over which it must be spread before its results are 
measurable. , , i • 
The work upon a farm, much more than the work in any 
factory or mechanical industry, is one of perpetual adjust- 
ment. You have upon most farms many different kinds of 
produce cverv vear, and you also have upon all farms a 
necessary difference between one year and .the next. The 
different' kinds of produce work in one with another, and half 
the difference between successful and unsuccessful farming 
is a right judgment in arranging, not only season by season, 
but actually day by dav. the relations of one part of your 
production "to another. Even in districts where there is one 
staple product this is true, and. on much the greater part of 
farms where general production is the rule, it is especially 
true. On the top of this you have the changing arrange- 
ments of successive years, and you cannot even. take so 
Icngttiy a unit as the agricultural year : even that is too 
simple and too short. 
Tiie master must judge as accurately as he can what pro- 
portion of his various kinds of produce will have to be retained 
upon the farm, and what proportions sold. Up to the last 
moment — until the produce is actually garnered — he must 
remain in some doubt of its total amount, even roughly es- 
timated. He has no exact knowledge until threshing is over. 
The grain of the wheat he would sell, and some of the barley. 
The oats in normal times he would keep for his own use. 
though it mav well be that next year rationing will compel 
him to release this cereal and trust to inferior government 
food for his horses. Most or all of the straw he will keep. 
Of the peas and beans he must estimate what proportion 
will be needed, and what he can sell. 
It is obvious that the calculation of value in what he retains 
is of the greatest complexity. That value reappears in the 
labour done by his horses, in the sale of his live stock, in the 
breeding of further livestock, in milk and butter, in manure, 
and so forth. But not the most expert could make with any 
exactitude a repartition between these various values, and 
it is remarkable that the man who judges best how to dis- 
tribute produce, what to keep and what to sell, is often the 
one who can tell you least in figures how the thing stands. 
It might seem that the produce sold in the market against 
cash will at any rate be a simple matter to calculate, and 
that having once determined 'how much can be so released, 
the farmer's receipts under this head would be a mere matter 
of record. Even this is an error. Of his gross receipts 
indeed it is true ; of his net receipts, which alone are in 
question, it is not. Nor is it of importance, for no one would 
limit a farmer's true taxable income to mere cash receipts. 
Then there is the difficulty of the time-unit. 
If the whole of a farmer's complicated and difficult arrange- 
ments could be set out within the course of one agricul- 
tural year, from Michaelmas to Michaelmas, the problem of 
estimating his position would be less difficult than it is. 
But, as we have said, it cannot be so fixed. His cereals all 
come within that unit, but his root crops do not ; they over- 
lap it. The root crop sown in one agricultural year is gar- 
nered and used in the next, so that if cereals and roots are 
combined, the unit is over 18 months. The fallow is another 
element of complexity. The land lies idle during the greater 
part of the year ; it is a source of heavy expense, "because 
fallow is left for the purpose not only of resting the land, 
but much more, especially on heavy land, for the purpose of 
cleaning it. It has to be ploughed, cultivated and re- 
ploughed, and three preliminary ploughings are better than 
two. Only at the end o£ many months is it fit for taking the 
seed, and the whole process from the be.ginning of fallow to 
the subsequent harvest may be one of anything from 
fourteen months to twenty. 
Then he must consider his rotation, and that is by no means 
a matter of routine, although the farmer naturally tries to 
make it as much 'a. matter of routine as possible, in order to 
save errors in calculation. A field upon which the natural 
routine would be, say, wheat after beans, may have to be put 
down to fallow on account of its condition : or again, the 
demand for a new type of crop, such as flax (which we are 
beine asked for), or sugar beet (which we certainly shall be 
asked for in the near future), puts out the old rotation. 
Of the stock bred, pigs will come within the agricultural 
year but cattle will not. He will breed bullocks which he 
may'not sell for two vears or more, and heifers which he will 
not sell at all, but keep to lead on his stock and maintain it 
as well as for milk when they shall be grown. Finally, he 
has to be making purchases the whole time of artificial 
manure and of what used to be called artificial food, that is, 
food such as cake, which he docs not produce. 
This Ust of the arrangements the master must make is 
quite incomplete and elementary, but it is sufiicient to show 
the peculiar difficulties of estimating profit even over a con- 
siderable space of time. When we add to this the fact that 
prices are normally far more susceptible of fluctuation in 
this industry than in those of the towns, it should be apparent 
that the system of taxation ought of its nature to differ 
from that "imposed upon the towns, and only to be fixed 
after full consultation with strong local Committees, having 
something more than advisory power. 
To some extent (but very imperfectly), this principle has 
already been admitted. Agricultural rates are on a different 
basis altogether from town rates. That curious antiquity, 
the tithe, which cannot long survive in its present form, 
is at once an admitted anomaly, and an example of a dif- 
ferent form of taxation.* 
Most important of all, the principle of income tax is quite 
different. It is to this point that special attention will have 
to be directed in the immediate future. A high income tax 
will remain. Whether it will remain at the extraordinarily 
level which most people now predict, will depend upon the 
general fiscal policy pursued after the war, but it will cer- 
tainly remain very high. The policy in favour for the moment 
is to" charge profits made from the land either upon book 
statements, or upon some multiple of the rent paid or payable. 
There can be no complaint against the action thus freely 
offered, but it is worth pointing out that no system- of book- 
keeping ever yet invented will exactly show the true profit 
upon a farm, with the precision that could be obtained in 
the case of a factory. However, we are supposing the 
farmer only to be free to accept ^this method if he likes. 
The alternative method, which is practical and, with a just 
multiple, would act fairly over a long term of years, will be 
the stand-by of income tax upon the land in the future. 
The first of these is the proportion of expenditure which 
goes in what corresponds in the case of the factory to up- 
keep and wear and tear. In the case of buildings and, to 
a less extent, in the case of gates and fences and the rest, 
it has been examined, though it can hardly be said to, have 
been settled, but in the case of opening and keeping clear 
ditches and drains, planting, of keeping down pests of all 
kinds, and many other items, it has not been fully considered. 
Moreover, it has only been considered from the owner's 
point of view, and never yet from the tenant's. Another 
great drawback to the use of the rent as a basis of taxation 
is that the proportion of rent to profits must necessarily 
differ with the type of land and with the class of cultivation 
upon that land. In theory rent bears no relation what- 
ever to profits. In theory the full rental of a piece of land 
requiring say £2,000 capital to cultivate it, is fixed by com- 
petition between farmers who each have £2,000 to put in, 
and are calculating their profits not in relation to rental at 
all, but in relation to the sum they personally invest. The 
same rental paid for a Cheshire dairy farm and for a piece 
of heavy Essex clay means such a totally different form 
of working, such a different proportion of capital, etc., that 
it also means quite a different scale of profit. 
The moral of all this simply summed up is that both forms 
of State action after the 'var— the settlement of the new 
taxation and the State demands for housing, for grants of 
land, for particular crops, etc., will never work, and will only 
do harm unless there is a proper local machinery, not only 
advisory to State officials, but working in at least equal 
authority with them. W^ith the suggestion of what such 
local bodies might be we will conclude this series next week. 
Agricola. 
• To day it would be more just to say that it had ceased to be a tax 
and had become a vested interest. 
