Again, when we compare this system with that of the Continental small holdings-France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany-we find that the cost of production, and consequently the cost of living, is far below ours. When our agricultural labourers were receiving the miserable wage of IIS. to 14s. a week these countries were able to flood our markets with their dairy produce at a price far below that which would have given a profit to our landowners and farmers.

These countries to-day are not in the throes of unemployment; they have reabsorbed their people on to the land, and they have become valuable units of production.

Why is it that we, after winning the war and after four years of peace, are face to face with industrial bankruptcy?

Why is it that we are unable to compete in the world's markets and that our country is flooded with cheap foreign goods?

The reason can be traced down to the fact that these Continental countries are not mainly dependent on industry for their maintenance; that they have not seven-eighths of their population in large towns and one-eighth on the land.

Their staple industry is agriculture, and they have their people firmly placed on the land, owning small farms of 20 to 30 acres, and producing food for their populations at a fraction of the cost that our big farmers can produce it for our industrial workers.

How can a farmer of 500 acres hold his own against twentyfive small farmers of 20 acres each, all working their land themselves with the help of their families?

How can his stockyard hold its own against twenty-five small stockyards filled with pigs, cows, sheep, poultry, etc., that receive the personal attention of the family and are not saddled with heavy wage charges?

Would it not seem from this that our first duty to the country, to our children and to the unhappy unemployed, is to open out the land to the people, to do everything in our power to stabilise labour, and to winnow from the body politic of the agricultural and commercial communities the families that are suitable for cultivating the land on an intensive system similar to that in operation on the Continent?

If this were done, a great army of the best and bravest of our derelict wage-earning classes would avail themselves of this haven of refuge-the small holding—and under the supervision of chosen instructors would become in a few years the finest intensive cultivators in Europe and the most valuable productive units in the country.

Such a policy would transform the whole internal industry of the country. Rural towns and villages would double and

quadruple their trade. Food would become more plentiful and cheaper, and this would set our industries on their feet again.

Would it not be better to raise Exchequer Bonds on settling a quarter of a million families on the land than to spend tens of millions on foreign credit loans which may never be repaid?

Would it not be better to open up the rich and fertile land of this country to the people on a basis of 3 per cent. Refunding Loan, to be paid back in fifty yearly instalments, than to continue a system of farming that cannot compete in productivity and cheapness with our efficient rivals on the Continent?

The crying need of this country to-day is employment, useful employment, for the people. Here on our own soil is a vast field for productive work.

In a few years the rich soil of the country would respond to the careful husbandry of these emancipated men and their families and would begin to yield some 100,000,000l. more produce per year.

This great sum saved to the country would be a direct relief to our industry and a stimulant to the national revenue.

This money, instead of going abroad, would pass from hand to hand, through village, town, and industrial centre, and enormously increase the internal trade of the country.

Could anything be conceived or devised more effectively to bring back to us a healthy growth of industrial life than such a natural and sane policy as the opening up of the country to the people?

Could industry be better served than by increasing the annual yield of agricultural production? Many of the partially derelict industries would follow the example of the Continental manufacturers and transfer their factories from the congested and expensive towns to the country, where food would be cheaper and an abundance of labour available.

We have a Small Holdings Act of 1908 full of good intentions, but so framed that it is utterly unworkable. It legislates for a class that does not exist, the rich agricultural labourer. It places the administration of the small holdings in the hands of the county, borough, and district councils, bodies that are permeated with interests vested in the very land that should belong to the people. The small holdings that have been developed by this Act carry for all time high land, superintendence, and building charges in their rents, with the result that their rentals stand out in the surrounding countryside as glaring examples of extortion.

To illustrate this, there are thriving and prosperous ex-service men's colonies in the Holland district of South Lincolnshire of over 200 settlers. The total charges on their holdings of from 10 to 12

acres come annually to over 8ol., making a charge of 71. to 81. per acre, while the surrounding farm land is rented by the big farmer from 31. to 51. per acre.

In spite of this, if we examine the results derived from the few small holdings that have been established under this abortive Act we find it proved beyond dispute that where small holdings have been established on rich land suitable for intensive cultivation their yield of general agricultural produce is immensely greater than that of the big farms of 500 acres, and that the cost of production is lower.

To-day the whole potentialities of this increased output are locked and barred from the people. There is a waiting list of 20,000 ex-service men who have applied for land; there are tens of thousands of men walking the streets in despair in the towns of this country who wish to work and own their own land. If we placed such men as these on the land and maintained them until their first harvest, the production of Great Britain would be enormously increased, and the necessary financial outlay would be the finest investment the Treasury ever made. We have only to examine the financial undertakings of our self-governing Colonies in land settlement to see that it is one of the basic sources of wealth in a State. The Irish peasants were financed by our Government for the purchase of land from the Irish landlords and have already paid off their mortgages. Are we going to deny the same privileges to our own countrymen ?

You will be told by urbanised business experts that nothing pays like mass production, and that the cutting up of estates is a retrograde policy which will lead to diminished production.

It must be remembered that land is not a machine: it follows the laws of Nature and is governed by the seasons of the year; it cannot be hurried or retarded in its productivity. It cannot, by the turning of a handle, be forced to produce in and out of season, but requires the constant care and attention of vigilant agriculturists to bring its resources to perfect fruition, and only gives of its best in response to the personal touch of ownership. You will be told that the man from the town is utterly unsuited by disposition and training to cultivate land.

In refutation of this argument, so commonly used by the enemies of land reform, I can cite the experience of the ex-service men's colonies in Lincolnshire, where there are over 200 settlers. The men who lead in efficient intensive cultivation are the men who have had a town training and were previously artisans by profession.

I need only quote Sir Kingsley Wood's review of the progress of the allotment movement called The Call of the Land,' which appeared in The Times on August 27, to show that there is a latent

desire for land amongst the town populations of this country. He says:

There are some 1,330,000 allotments in England and Wales, and the total acreage cultivated is approximately 180,000. Compared with the number of holders before the war the figures show an increase of some 800,000, and the increase in area is about 80,000 acres. It is indeed notable to find such important centres as Birmingham with 18,000 allotments, Bristol with 17,000, Leicester 16,000, Sheffield 13,000, Derby and Liverpool 8000 each, Manchester and Cardiff 7000 each, and Newcastle and Swindon 6000 each. In the jurisdiction of the metropolitan borough councils alone there are, it is estimated, about 25,000 plot holders tilling an area of about 1600 acres.

This shows that the instinct of husbandry is still alive in the people, that if the land was accessible to them, and financial support assured, a great army of destitute men and their familes would become productive units in intensive cultivation. Their spontaneous labour would save this country some 100,000,000l., which annually go abroad to purchase what we might well grow at home.

To show the waste that is going on at present, we import pork and bacon to the value of 60,000,000l., and our dairy produce, fruit and vegetable imports come to 150,000,000l. every year. If we had an efficient Board of Agriculture, run on the Danish or our own Colonial system, with a Land Ministry to see that the people have access to the land, it could save the country this sum, which would go far to liquidate unemployment and stimulate internal trade. There is nothing lacking economically or organically here to make this possible; we have the men and we have the land. Yet those who take up this political fight will have to face a terrible inertia, a terrible apathy, and an appalling ignorance and lack of initiative amongst the body politic of the people. They will have against them the Agricultural Labourers Union, who see in this movement the loss to them of the agricultural wage-earner and consequently diminishing union funds. They will have to listen to endless calculations made by the farmers in their endeavour to prove the fallacies of the small holding system. But against all these arguments this simple fact stands out-that the Continental small holding system has always beaten us in our own markets in the past, is beating our big farmers to-day, and will always beat them.

Why? Because the small holder's outlay on crops is small and his labour great.

If you appeal to the Board of Agriculture you will be deluged with proofs' of the utter failure of the small holdings system! Yet the men they have established on the land are transform ng the face of the country into a garden of fruit trees and flourishing crops, and the majority of them have been able to put by during

the last three years hundreds of pounds for a rainy day. There are some small isolated holdings in Kent of from 12 to 14 acres that maintain six adult workers, who are able to keep a motor and who are financially sound.

The ignorance of the well-to-do classes and the short-sighted policy of our past and present Administrations towards the potentialities of our internal resources are appalling. The apathy and blindness of our political leaders are tragic. The whole governing class are so saturated with party politics and party timidities that their vision is clouded and their programmes colourless.

HAMMOND FOOT.