Chapter VII: Part 7

How far will the lessees to whom the National Mining Board will grant leases to work the coal be the same persons and companies as the present lessees? In this matter it is desirable to maintain the maximum amount of flexibility and variety. I do not think we have yet discovered the ideal unit, the ideal organisation for the development of our principal national asset. So much do our coalfields differ in geological formation, in tradition, in the subdivision and classification of labour, in outlet for trade, that it is unlikely that any single unit or organisation will be the ideal one for every coalfield. So we must resist any attempt, especially an early attempt, at stereotyping or standardising the type of lessee. By trial and error we shall learn much.

All the following types of lessee seem likely, sooner or later, to demand the attention of the National Mining Board. (I shall not touch on the question of distribution, inland and export. That is another and quite separate question):--

(i) _The Present Lessees._--I see no reason to doubt that in the vast majority of cases the present lessees would be prepared to continue to operate their mines, paying royalties to the State instead of to the present royalty-owner. Where the unit is sufficiently large and the management efficient, the National Mining Board would probably grant a fresh lease, incorporating such conditions as to unification, joint control, and publicity as they might consider necessary. If the present lessees do not want the lease, there are others who will.

(ii) _Larger Groups._--In a great many cases, however, the Board would decline to grant separate leases in respect of each of a number of small collieries, and would indicate that they were only prepared to receive applications for leases by groups of persons or companies prepared to amalgamate themselves into a corporation representing an output of x tons _per annum_. This figure would vary in each coalfield. In South Staffordshire, in particular, divided ownership has had most prejudicial effects in the matter of pumping.

(iii) _District Coal Boards._--Sir Arthur Duckham's scheme of statutory companies known as District Coal Boards requires consideration. Without necessarily adopting his districts or his uniformity of type throughout the country, there are many areas where it might be found that voluntary amalgamation was impracticable, and that the desired result could only be attained by an Act of Parliament providing for the compulsory amalgamation of persons and companies working a specified area and the issue of shares in the new corporation in exchange for the previous holdings.

(iv) _Public Authorities._--I should very much like to see, sooner or later, in some area, a lessee in the form of an organisation which, though not national--not the State--should be at any rate public--something on the lines of the Port of London Authority.

It may well be that in one or more of our coalfields a public authority of this type, though with larger labour representation upon it and with a large measure of joint control from top to bottom, would be a suitable lessee of the minerals in that area. The important point is that public management need not mean bureaucratic State-management with the disadvantages popularly associated with it.

(v) I have mentioned several types of possible lessees, but it will be noticed that there is nothing in these suggestions which would prevent the National Mining Board from making the experiment of working a few mines themselves.

To sum up. There _is_ a problem of the Mines. No sensible person should be deceived by the quiescence of the last twelve abnormal months. Without using extravagant language, the coal-mining industry is a volcano liable at any moment to erupt and involve the whole community in loss and suffering. Therefore, as a body of citizens, we are under a duty to seek a solution which can be effected between the occurrence of the recurring crises. As a body of Liberal citizens we shall naturally seek a Liberal solution, and the foregoing suggestions (for which no originality is claimed) are inspired by the Liberal point of view. They apply to the industrial sphere principles which have been tried and proved in the political sphere, both in the central and the local government. Apart from State acquisition of the minerals, about which there can surely be no question, these suggestions merely develop tendencies and organisations already existing within the industry. They involve no leap in the dark, such as has been attributed by some to nationalisation of the whole industry, and they provide for great flexibility and experimentation. The fact that the official spokesmen of neither miners nor colliery-owners may like them need not deter us. They have had numerous opportunities of settling the problem amongst themselves, but the "die-hards" in both camps have always prevented it. It is time that the general public outside the industry took the matter in hand and propounded a solution likely to be acceptable to the vast body of sensible and central feeling within the industry.

THE LAND QUESTION

BY A.S. COMYNS CARR

Member of Acquisition of Land Committee, 1918.

Mr. Comyns Carr said:--The Land Question I believe to be the most important subject in purely domestic politics to-day, as it was in 1914. At that date we were embarking, under the especial leadership of one who has now deserted us, upon a comprehensive campaign dealing with that question in all its aspects. The present Government has filled a large portion of the Statute Book with legislation bearing on the land; it is not the quantity we have to complain of, but the quality. In 1914 we had already achieved one signal victory in carrying against the House of Lords the Land Clauses of the Budget of 1909-10, and although many of us were never satisfied with the form which those clauses took, they were valuable both as a step in the direction of land taxation and for the machinery of valuation which they established. Mr. Lloyd George in his present alliance with the Tories has sunk so low as not only to repeal those clauses, but actually to refund to the landlords every penny which they have paid in taxation under them.

The campaign which was inaugurated in 1913 did not deal with the question of taxation only, and for my part, although I am an enthusiast on this branch of the subject, I have never thought that other aspects should be neglected. We put forward proposals for dealing with leases both in town and country. The present Government has carried and repealed again a series of statutes dealing with agriculture. Their original policy was to offer to the farmer guaranteed prices for his produce, if necessary at the expense of the tax-payer, and to the labourer guaranteed wages, to be fixed and enforced by Wages Boards. Before this policy was fully in operation it was repealed. The farmer got some cash compensation for his losses; the labourer has got nothing but voluntary Conciliation Boards, with no power to do more than pass pious resolutions. There has, however, survived this welter of contradictory legislation, a series of clauses which do confer upon the tenant farmer a substantial part of the rights in his dealings with his landlord for which we were agitating in 1914. The town lease-holder, on the other hand, has got nothing, and it is one of the first duties of the Liberal Party to provide him with security against the confiscation of his improvements and goodwill, to give him reasonable security of tenure, and to put an end once for all to the pestilent system of building leases which extends all over London and to about half the other towns of England. The evils of this system are especially to be found in those older parts of our great cities where the original leases are drawing to a close. In such cases a kind of blight appears to settle on whole neighbourhoods, and no improvements can be carried out by either party because the landlord cannot obtain possession, and the tenant has not, and is unable to obtain, a sufficient length of term to make it worth his while to risk his capital upon them.

HOUSING

The branch of the land question to which the Government called the greatest attention in their election promises was Housing. On this subject the Government have placed many pages of legislation on the Statute Book. One can only wish that the houses occupied as much space. They began by informing us, probably accurately, that up to the time of the Armistice there was an accumulated shortage of 500,000 houses; in pre-war days new working-class houses were required, and to a certain extent provided, although the shortage had then already begun, to an average number of 90,000 a year. According to the official figures in July last, 123,000 houses had been completed by Local Authorities and Public Utility Societies; 37,000 by private builders with Government subsidies; 36,000 were under construction, and as the Government have now limited the total scheme (thereby causing the resignation of Dr. Addison, its sponsor) there remain 17,000 to be built. This is the record of four years, so clearly the Government have not even succeeded in keeping pace with the normal annual demand, and the shortage has not been attacked, but actually accentuated.

The cause of the failure was mainly financial. Without attacking the roots of the evil in our land and rating system, and without attempting to control the output and supply of materials and building in the way in which munitions were controlled during the war, the Government brought forward gigantic schemes to be financed from the supposedly bottomless purse of the tax-payer. At the same time the demand for building materials and labour in every direction was at its maximum, and unfortunately both employers and employed in the building and allied industries took the fullest advantage of the position to force up prices without regard to the unfortunate people who wanted houses. The Trade Unions concerned seem to have overlooked the fact that if wages were raised and output reduced houses would become so dear that their fellow-workmen who needed them could not attempt to pay the rents required, and the tax-payer would revolt against the burdens imposed upon him; thus the golden era for their own trade was bound to come to a rapid end, and, so far from employment being increased and prolonged, unemployment on a large scale was bound to result. With the Anti-Waste panic and the Geddes Axe, social reform was cut first, and, in their hurry to stop the provision of homes for heroes, the Government is indulging in such false economies as leaving derelict land acquired and laid out at enormous cost, even covering over excavations already made, and paying out to members of the building trade large sums in unemployment benefit, while the demand for the houses on which they might be employed is left wholly unsatisfied.

LAND FOR PUBLIC PURPOSES

The Acquisition and Valuation of Land for the purpose of public improvements is a branch of the question to which a great deal of attention was drawn during and immediately after the war. The Government appointed a Committee, of which the present Solicitor-General was chairman, and which, in spite of a marked scarcity of advanced land reformers amongst its members, produced a series of remarkably unanimous and far-reaching recommendations. These recommendations dealt with four main topics:--

(_a_) Improvements in the machinery by which powers may be obtained by public and private bodies for the acquisition of land for improvements of a public character;

(_b_) Valuation of land which it is proposed to acquire;

(_c_) Fair adjustment as between these bodies and the owners of other land, both of claims by owners for damage done by the undertaking to other lands, and of claims by the promoting bodies for increased value given by their undertaking to other lands; and

(_d_) The application of these principles to the special subject of mining.

The Government in the Acquisition of Land Act, 1919, has adopted a great part of the Committee's recommendations under the second head, and this Act has undoubtedly effected an enormous improvement in the prices paid by public bodies for land which they require, although, most unfortunately, the same immunity from the extortion of the land-owner and the land speculator has not been extended to private bodies such as railway companies who need land for the improvement of public services. Moreover, it has not attempted to bring the purchase price of land into any relation with its taxing valuation.

The whole of the rest of the Committee's recommendations dealing with the other three points which I have mentioned, the Government has wholly ignored. Powers for public development can still only be obtained by the slow, costly and antiquated processes in vogue before the war; private owners of lands adjoining works of a public character are still in a position to put into their own pockets large increases in value due to public improvements to which they have contributed nothing, and which they may even have impeded; the development of minerals is still hampered by the veto of unreasonable owners, by the necessity of leaving unnecessary barriers between different properties, and by other obstacles which were dealt with in detail in the Committee's report. An illustration of the importance of this aspect of the question was put before the Committee and has been emphasised by recent events. It was stated on behalf of the railway companies that they were prepared with schemes for the extension of their systems in various parts of the country, which would not only provide temporary employment for a large number of men on construction, and permanent employment to a smaller number on the working of the lines, but would also open up new residential and industrial districts, but that it was impossible for them to find the necessary funds unless they could have some guarantee that at least any loss upon the cost of construction would be charged upon the increased value of land in the new districts which would be created by the railway extensions. Remarkable instances were given of the way in which the value of land had been multiplied many-fold by the promotion of new railways, which, nevertheless, had never succeeded in paying a dividend to their shareholders, and the capital cost of which had been practically lost.

On the other hand, the Committee were assured that, given a charge on the increased value of land likely to be created, there would be no difficulty in obtaining the necessary funds without Government assistance. When the pressure of the unemployment problem became acute, and not before--and then it was, of course, too late--the Government turned their attention to this problem, and have guaranteed the interest upon new capital to be expended on a few of these railway extensions, but instead of charging the guarantee upon the increased value of land, they have charged it upon the pocket of the tax-payer. The most striking instance is that of the tube railway from Charing Cross to Golders Green, now being extended under Government guarantee to Edgware. Those who provided the original capital have never received any return upon their money, yet millions have been put into the pockets of the owners of what was undeveloped land now served by the line, and now that the extension is being carried out with the tax-payers' guarantee, the land-owners will again reap the benefit untaxed.

The development of the natural resources of our country was one of the promises held out by Mr. Lloyd George to the electors in 1918. Schemes were ready, and are still in the official pigeon-holes, for the production of electricity on a very large scale both from water power and from coal, which would not only provide employment, but cheapen the cost of production in all our industries. France, Italy, and other countries are at this moment carrying out similar schemes whereby they will relieve themselves to a large extent from dependence on British coal. But here, four years of Coalition Government have left us practically where we were. In France, although in many respects her social system seems to me less enlightened than our own, the power of the land-owner to obstruct enterprise and development is by no means so great. Land Reform in this country is a necessary preliminary to the fulfilment of Mr. Lloyd George's promises. Development at the public expense without such reforms will result chiefly in further burdens upon the tax-payer and further enrichment of the landowner.

RATING RELIEF FOR IMPROVEMENTS

This brings me to the last, and in my opinion the most important branch of the Land Question, that relating to the reform of our system of rating and taxation. I am myself an ardent supporter of the policy which I think has been rather unfortunately named the Taxation of Land Values. The vital point about this policy is not so much that we should tax land values, as that we should leave off taxing buildings and other improvements of land. The policy would be better described as the Relief of Improvements from Taxation. Its economic merits seem to me so obvious as hardly to require examination. It is only because the present system has been in force for over 300 years that it can find any supporters. If any one were to propose as a useful means of encouraging the steel trade or the boot trade, or as a desirable method of taxation, that a tax of, say, 50 per cent. should be imposed upon the value of every ton of steel or every pair of boots turned out in our factories, he would be rightly and universally denounced as a lunatic. Yet this is the system which ever since the days of Queen Elizabeth has been in force with regard to the building trade and all other industries which result in the production of improvements upon land.

As long as land remains unused it pays no rates or taxes, whatever its immediate potential value. But the moment it is brought into use, as soon as a house, a factory, or a railway is built upon it, or it is drained or planted--rates and taxes, which in these days often exceed 50 per cent. of its improved value, have to be paid, without regard even to the question whether its use is successful in yielding profits or not. Familiarity with this system, instead of breeding the contempt which it deserves, has bred a kind of passive acquiescence which is exceedingly difficult to shake. Even such a champion of our land system as the Duke of Bedford years ago in his book, _The Story of a Great Agricultural Estate_, perceived the absurdity, although he was apparently blind to the remedy and to the application of it to some of his estates which are not agricultural. He converted an ordinary arable field into a fruit garden, and discovered that his rates were promptly trebled by reason of his expenditure. Striking, but, nevertheless, everyday examples may be found if we see how the system works out in urban districts. If a new factory is built, rates and taxes are immediately levied on the full annual value of the building, which is a direct charge upon production, and has to be paid before a single person can be employed in the factory. It therefore not only restricts the possibilities of employment, but has to be added to the price at which the goods can be sold.

THE LESSON OF THE SLUMS

Or take the illustration of a slum area. Each tumble-down tenement is rated and taxed on the assessment based upon its annual rental value. In many places in the central parts of towns the total of these assessments is less than the sum for which the whole site could be sold as a building area, nevertheless if all the tenements fall or are pulled down the site may remain vacant for years and no rates or taxes are paid. But if substantial and decent buildings are erected on the site, immediately the assessment is raised to their full annual value. The individual or public body that has cleared away the slum and erected something decent in its place is thus immediately punished for doing so, with the result that such a thing is seldom done except at the public expense. The remedy for all these absurdities is quite a simple one. No one disputes that the sums necessary for municipal and imperial taxation have got to be provided. The question is, in so far as they are to be raised from lands and buildings, how can they be assessed most fairly and with the least injury to trade and commerce? They should be assessed upon the value of land which is not due to any effort of the owner or occupier; they should not be assessed upon nor increased because of any buildings which he may have erected or any improvements which he may have carried out.

This question was closely investigated by the Land Enquiry Committee appointed by Mr. Lloyd George in 1913. They were unanimous in condemning the existing system and in regarding the one which I have just described as the ideal. They were, however, met by great difficulties in its immediate practical application, because, owing to the long prevalence of the wrong system, an immediate and total change would bring about rather startling alterations in the value of existing properties. The Committee closely considered these objections, and a number of alternative methods of bringing the change into operation gradually and without these drastic changes in value were put forward. The one which immediately suggested itself as the simplest, and from many points of view the most desirable, was to leave the rates and taxes of existing properties on their present basis, to impose them at their present rate on the annual value of all unoccupied land, but to exempt from rates and taxes all future buildings and improvements of every kind.

To illustrate the way in which this would work, let us revert to the case of a block of slum property. As long as it remained in its present condition the existing valuation based upon the annual rent obtainable for it would apply, but any parts of it which now are or may hereafter become unoccupied, would, instead of escaping as they do now from all rates and taxes, contribute on the basis of the value of their sites, which would be assessed at an annual rent for the purpose of comparison with the existing valuations, at least until the capital values of the whole rating area could be ascertained. If any improvements were carried out the assessments would not be raised on that account, as they would be under present conditions, and if a whole area were pulled down, replanned and rebuilt, the assessment instead of being based, as it would be to-day, on the annual value of the reconstructed property, would be based upon the site value alone. Gradually in this way site value would become the prevalent basis of assessment. "It is obvious," as the Committee said in 1913, "that unrating of future improvements is from the economic point of view of far more importance than the unrating of existing improvements; if we want to encourage new buildings and new improvements, what is really important is to ensure that new improvements (not old ones) shall be exempt from the burden of rates." The Committee were, however, compelled to reject this suggestion at that time on the ground that "it would cause an unfair differentiation between the man who had already put up buildings or improvements, and the man who put up buildings or improvements after the passing of the Act." But as between buildings and improvements which existed before the war and those which come into existence under post-war conditions no such unfairness could operate, because the increase in the cost of building even to-day is greater than the benefit which would accrue from the unrating of improvements. The present is therefore the unique opportunity for bringing into force this much-needed reform in the most effective way, free from the difficulties which had to be met in 1913. If it had been carried out immediately after the Armistice it would, in my opinion, have done more than anything else to solve the housing problem, and even now it is not too late. In fact, in view of the present unemployment it would be most opportune. Incidentally it would soon render unnecessary the renewal of the Rent Restriction Act. I understand that something on these lines has been introduced in New York to meet a similar problem.

A RATE AND A TAX UPON SITE VALUES

The Committee of 1913 were obliged to turn their attention to other suggestions. They proposed:

(_a_) That all future increases in the expenditure of each Local Authority which had to be met out of rates should be met by a rate upon site values instead of upon the existing assessments; and

(_b_) That existing expenditure should be met to a small extent compulsorily, and to a larger extent at the option of the Local Authority, in the same manner.

There is no reason why these proposals should not be brought into force simultaneously with that relating to new buildings and improvements. They made these proposals conditional upon a substantial increase in the grants in aid to Local Authorities, especially in necessitous areas, from the Imperial Exchequer; and they suggested, although they did not definitely recommend, that a part at least of this increased grant might be raised by means of an additional tax upon site values. This, I think, should certainly be done, and such a tax might be wholly or partially substituted for the present Land Tax and Income-Tax Schedule A, which are assessed on the wrong basis.

These proposals would, of course, involve the revival and revision of the National Land Valuation established by the Finance Act, 1909-10, which should be made the basis of all taxation and rating relating to real property. This would be both a reform and an economy, because there are at present several overlapping systems of valuation by Central and Local Authorities, none of which are really satisfactory even on the present unsatisfactory basis of assessment. The existence of such a valuation frequently revised and kept up to date, and independent of local influences, would be invaluable not only for purposes of rating and taxation, but also in arriving at a fair price for the acquisition of land for public purposes, and for the levying of special charges upon the increased value due to particular public improvements, such as railway extensions, with which I have already dealt.

I am not one of those who claim for these reforms that they would cure all the evils from which the community is at present suffering, but I do believe that there is no other and no better way of removing the unfairness and the restrictions of our present methods of rating and taxation or of setting free and stimulating the energies of our people in the development of the resources of our country.

AGRICULTURAL QUESTIONS

BY RT. HON. F.D. ACLAND

P.C.; M.P. (L.) North-West Cornwall; Financial Secretary, War Office, 1908-10; Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1911-15; Financial Secretary to Treasury, Feb.-June, 1915; Secretary to the Board of Agriculture, 1915-16; a Forestry Commissioner. Chairman of the Agricultural Organisation Society.

Mr. Acland said:--I begin by laying down in a didactic form five points which one would like to see firmly established in our rural life: (i) intensive production; (ii) plenty of employment at good wages; (iii) easy access to land, and a good chance of rising upon the land; (iv) real independence in rural life; (v) co-operative association for many purposes.

Intensive production is most important. It is so easy to say the farmer _can_ get more out of the land, and the farmer _should_ get more out of the land, that we are tempted to continue and say that the farmer _must be made_ to get more out of the land. But it isn't so easy. It has been tried and failed, and when any subject in our British political life has been brought up to the boiling-point, and yet nothing effective has been done, it is extremely difficult to bring it to the boil a second time.

It is worth while tracing out what has actually happened. The Government's Agriculture Act of 1921 contained four great principles:--(i) that we must have more food produced in this country (_a_) as an insurance against risk of war, (_b_) so as to meet our post-war conditions as a debtor nation by importing less of our food supplies; (ii) that as the most productive farming is arable farming, and as by maintaining a proper proportion of arable we can on emergency make ourselves independent for our food supplies for an indefinite time, farmers should be guaranteed against loss on their arable rotations; (iii) that if farmers are to be required to produce more they must have clear legal rights to farm their land in the most productive way, a greater compensation for disturbance; (iv) that as the first three principles give security to the nation and to the farmer, it is desirable also to give security to the worker by permanently continuing the war-time system of Agricultural Wages Boards.

These principles were duly embodied in the Bill as it left the House of Commons:--

(i) The Ministry of Agriculture, acting through the County Agricultural Committees, was given powers to insist on a certain standard of arable cultivation, as well as in minor matters, such as control of weeds and of rabbits;

(ii) The difference between the ascertained market price and the estimated cost of production on his wheat and oat acreage was guaranteed to the farmer, the guarantee not to be altered except after four years' notice;

(iii) The landlord had to forfeit a year's rent if a tenant was disturbed except for bad farming, or four years' rent if the disturbance was capricious;

(iv) The existing Wages Board system was continued.

THE DESTRUCTION OF A POLICY

The gradual destruction of this policy began in the House of Lords. They allowed themselves to be swept away by the popular cry against Government interference with industry, and cut out the power of control of cultivation. The Prime Minister had said that this was an absolutely essential part of the Bill, and of the Government's policy, but the Government quietly and characteristically accepted the Lords' amendment and the Bill was passed.

Then troubles began. Other industries began to ask why the Government satisfied agriculture and not them, and as the Government could not plead their control of agriculture in justification, no real reply was possible. Also the cold fit came on as regards national expenditure. The Bill for the corn subsidies threatened to be very high. Though Europe was starving, it could not buy, so cheap American grain flooded our markets; but cost of production here was still at its peak, and, for oats especially, the amount to be paid to the farmer threatened to be large. It was realised that it might cost 25-30 millions to implement the guarantees for the first year, and perhaps 10-12 millions a year later. In short, the guarantees had to go. Instead of four years' notice of any change, a Bill to repeal the great Act was introduced five months after it had been passed. And it was unfortunately part of the bargain with the farmers who received for the single season perhaps six or eight millions less than they might have been entitled to under the Act, that the Wages Boards should be abolished--and they were. There remained of the original structure only the depreciation of the value of all agricultural landowners' property by about one-twentieth, owing to the extra compensation for disturbance.

Every one felt that they had been had, and they had been. The industry which had lately been talked up and made much of was dumped into the dustbin. The farmers had lost their guarantees on the strength of which, in many cases, they had bought their farms dear or planned their rotations. The labourers, who particularly needed the protection of Wages Boards during a time of fall in cost of living and unemployment, had lost all legal protection. The landlords, willing enough to give what was asked of them if any national purpose was to be served, found that their loss brought no corresponding national gain. Agriculture retired as far as it could from any contact with perfidious Governments, to lick its wounds.

That is not a good basis upon which to build intensive cultivation or any other active policy. There being now no legal or patriotic call to intensive production, we are driven back to ask, "Does intensive production pay?" and the broad answer is that at a time of low prices it does not. There is no doubt that slowly and steadily education will gradually improve farming, and that farmers will learn to find out what parts of their business pay best and to concentrate upon them. There is also no doubt that even at low prices there is plenty of scope for better farming, and that better manuring, particularly of grass land, will pay. But the farmer is faced with an economic principle--the law of diminishing returns. It may be stated thus: beyond a certain point which rises and falls directly with the value of the product, extra doses of labour and manure do not give a corresponding return. It is this principle which accounts for what we see everywhere--that farmers are tending to economise as much as they can on their labour and to let arable land go back to grass.

And if this is clear to farmers who are thinking of intensive arable farming, still more is it true in comparing arable with grass. If you take the same sort of quantity of arable and grass farms, farmed by men of the same skill and diligence, over a range of seasons under low world prices for farm produce, you will, I believe, find something like this: grass land needs half the capital and one-third of the labour of arable; it produces three-quarters the receipts with half the payments, and yields double the profit per acre and four times the profit on capital. The moral of all this is clear. Unless the nation is willing to go back to protection for agriculture, which I am glad to believe in the general interest unthinkable, and unless it is willing to guarantee the farmer against loss from that method of agriculture which means most production and most employment, we must let the farmer set the tune and farm in the way it best suits him to farm. We must try, in fact, not to talk too much nonsense about intensive production as the cure for agricultural depression. It is useful to remember that all countries overseas which combine high wages with agricultural prosperity have a very low output per acre judged by our standards.

EMPLOYMENT AND WAGES

It follows directly from what I have just said that a time of high costs and low prices like the present, like the time of lower costs but still lower prices of the late '80's and early '90's, is not a favourable time for expecting employment to be brisk or wages high. And reasons other than those which we have yet considered make the farmer feel his labour to be specially burdensome at present. He finds that the prices he gets on the average are one and one-third times what they were before the war: what he has to buy costing from one and a half to one and two-thirds what it cost before the war; and he is expected in very many counties in England and Wales to pay his workers about double what he paid before the war. This is a strong point for him. But the labourers' position is just as strong. "I was not sufficiently well paid before the war. If this is to be recognised in any way at all, I must at the present cost of living (185) have double my pre-war wages." It is certainly beyond all question that 30/- a week, which is the present wage over a large part of England, is not, even with only 3/- a week rent for house and garden, enough to keep a man and his wife and family in a state of real efficiency. Yet I know from personal experience that this fact is not properly recognised in practice. If one tries to pay more one is regarded as a very rich man, and an extremely stupid one--an idea erroneous as to one's wealth and possibly exaggerated as to one's mentality.

How have the two conflicting views of farmer and labourer been reconciled in practice. I can only say that so far as my own knowledge extends--bearing in mind that the farmer has not the business man's habit of cheerfully setting off a bad year against a good (for the business man knows that trade must improve some time, and then he will make profits, while the farmer has no certainty that things will improve)--things might well have been worse. There has been a good deal of mutual consideration and desire to make the best of difficult circumstances. I have, however, little doubt that it would have been better had the Wages Boards, which had controlled the rise in wages during the rise in the cost of living, regulated the fall in wages during its fall--relaxing control perhaps later when things became more stable.

The reason why I think that things might have been worse is that the District Wages Committee left a good legacy to the voluntary Conciliation Committees which followed them--the men serving on the latter were those who under the Wages Board system had learned to negotiate with and to know and respect the workers--generally some of the best farmers in their districts--and they genuinely tried not to let the workers down with too much of a bump; on the other hand, they knew that the only value their recommendations could have was that they should be voluntarily observed, and therefore they took care not to recommend rates higher than those which the least favourably situated farmers in the district could manage to pay--which meant rates lower than many might have been willing to give. This means that any general rate agreed to voluntarily will be rather on the low side. But I would rather have a rate which is generally observed, even if it is rather low, than that every farmer should be a law unto himself. If there is no recognised standard, and one man with impunity pays a lower rate than his neighbours, other rates also tend to come down, and then the process begins over again.

Looking to the future, the only thing that I can say with any certainty about the wages question is that it needs very careful watching. Let us be sure first of our principle, that the first charge on land, as on any other industry, should be a reasonable standard of living for the workers. Then let us be sure of the fact that there is over a very large part of England and Wales no certain prospect of an improvement in the condition of the labourer compared with conditions ten years ago. The dangers to be feared are that in the present lamentable weakness of the men's unions large sections of farmers may break away from the recommendations of their leaders; and that if depression continues and war savings become depleted farmers will tend to push wages down in self-preservation. These things must be watched. If the general condition of agriculture improves without a corresponding improvement in the workers' condition, or if conditions get worse and the brunt of the burden is transferred to the labourer, we ought to be prepared to advocate a return to the old Wages Boards or the adoption of a Trade Board system. It must, I think, be a cardinal point of our Liberal faith that though it is better to leave industrial questions to be adjusted as much as possible by the parties concerned in the industry, the State must be ready to step in in any case in which the workers have not developed the power by their own combination to secure reasonable conditions and prospects. It is to the prospects that I now turn.

ACCESS TO THE LAND

I mean by this that there should be as many chances as possible for men and women who have an inclination for country pursuits to take up cultivation of the soil; the freest opportunity for experiment in making a living out of the land; and good chances for those who have started on the land ladder to rise to the top of it.

The three things which stand in the way are:--

(i) The cost of building and equipment;

(ii) The practice under which the cultivator provides all the movable capital;

(iii) The handicap on free use of land imposed upon its owners by the compensation clauses of the Agriculture Act.

These obstacles do real harm, in the first place, because a very large proportion of farms in this country are the wrong size: too large for a man to work with his hands, and too much for him to work with his head, as Sir Thomas Middleton has well said. Figures show quite conclusively that whether you take production per acre or production per man, the farm of from 100 to 150 acres is economically the worst-sized unit. Probably more than half of our farms lie between 70 and 100 acres. We should get far more out of the land if all were either below 80--so that a man and his family could manage them--or above 180, so that there would be a chance of applying to production the most scientific methods and up-to-date machinery.

But movement, either towards breaking up existing holdings or throwing them together, will be extremely slow. The one process means building new houses and buildings, which is prohibitive in price; and the other, also fresh building and the abandonment of hearths and homes, which is prohibited both by price and by sentiment. Any change in either direction is almost prohibitive to the new poor landowner class, because if one makes any change, except when a tenant dies or moves of his own accord, one forfeits a year's rent.

I have not yet mentioned the difficulty about capital. Under our British method, if a man wants a farm he must have capital--about £10 per arable acre and about £5 for grass. This is a great bar to freedom of experiment and the greatest bar on the way up the agricultural ladder. There ought to be free access to our farms by town brains, which can often strike out new and profitable lines if given a chance. It is not good for agriculture, and it does not promote that sympathy and contact and interchange which should exist between town and country, that a start in farming should need a heavy supply of capital. If our landlords were better off they might well try some of the continental systems, under which the landlord provides not only the farm and buildings, but the stock and equipment, and receives in addition to a fair rent for the land half the profits of the farm. But it is vain to hope for this under present conditions, and, for good or ill, the newly rich does not buy land. He knows too much, and he can get what he wants without it. He may lease a house, he does take shooting, but he won't buy an estate.

When thinking of the importance of freedom of experiment and of a ladder with no missing rungs, I have my mind on the possibility of the owner of one estate of from 5,000 to 10,000 acres throwing all the farms and many of the fields together and making his best tenants fellow-directors with him of a joint enterprise, one doing the buying and selling, one looking after the power and the tractors and implements, one planning the agricultural processes, one directing the labour and so on. This gives a prospect of the greatest production and the greatest profit, and it gives a really good labourer a chance which at present he has not got. At present, unless he leaves the land, in nine cases out of ten once a labourer always a labourer. My vision would give him a chance to become, first, foreman, then assistant manager, manager, director, and managing-director. It ought to be tried--but how one's tenants would loathe it, and quite natural too! At present if things go wrong, if it's not the fault of the Government or the weather, it's the farmer's own fault. On my joint-stock estate every director and manager would feel that all his colleagues were letting him down and destroying his profits. It is hard to make people accept at all readily, in practice, the teaching that they are their brothers' keeper.

The scheme could hardly be started with men accustomed to the present methods, and the cost of obtaining vacant possession of land would make it difficult to try with new men. I am sure, however, that something of the sort is a good and hopeful idea, and the best way of making the ladder complete. And I am emboldened to think that something of the sort will be tried gradually in some places, when I see the number of landlords' sons who are in this and other universities taking the best courses they can get in the science and economics of agriculture. They know this is the only way to retain a remnant of the old acres. It is quite new since the war--and a most hopeful sign.

INDEPENDENCE

I need not urge the importance in our villages of real independence of life. It was the absence of independence combined with long working hours and little occupation for the hours of leisure, which, more than low wages, caused the pre-war exodus from the country. Should the prospects of industry improve, but agriculture remain depressed, there will be another exodus from the country-side of the best of the young men who have come back to it after the war. It is of first-class importance, both from the national and from the agricultural point of view, that they should stay, for there was a real danger before the war that agriculture might become a residual industry, carried on mainly by them, too lethargic in mind and body to do anything else.

In a preface which he wrote to Volume I of the Land Report, as chairman of Lloyd George's Land Inquiry Committee (it seems a long time ago now that Lloyd George was a keen land reformer), my father sketched out the idea of setting up commissions to report parish by parish in each county, in the same way that commissions have reported on the parochial charities. They would record how the land was distributed, whether the influence of the landowners told for freedom or against it, whether there was a chance for the labourer to get on to the land and to mount the ladder. Whether there was an efficient village institute, whether there were enough allotments conveniently situated, whether the cottagers were allowed to keep pigs and poultry, and what the health and housing were like.

It is a good idea, and should be borne in mind. I confess I do not know enough to know whether it is now as desirable as it seemed to be before the war. I would fain hope not, but I am not sure. I believe that there is a good deal more real independent life in the villages now than there was ten years ago. There are, I think, now fewer villages like some in North Yorkshire before the war, in which the only chance for a Liberal candidate to have a meeting was to have it in the open-air, after dark on a night with no moon, and even then he needed a big voice--for his immediate audience was apt to be two dogs and a pig. Now, it seems to me that people like having political meetings going on, but do not bother to listen to any of them.

As to the present, there has been lately, within my knowledge, a great building of village institutes. There has been a tremendous development of football. Village industries, under the wise encouragement of the Development Commission, are reviving. Motor buses make access to town amusements much easier, and cinemas come out into the village. There is revived interest and very keen competition in the allotment and cottage garden shows. Thus it is, at any rate, down our way--but no one can know more than his own bit of country. On these and similar matters we ought to think and watch and meet together to report and discuss. We need more Maurice Hewletts and Mrs. Sturge Grettons to tell us how things really are, for nothing is so difficult to visualise as what is going on slowly in one's own parish.

CO-OPERATION

I come lastly to co-operation. You will think me biased when I speak of its possibilities. I am. I have been for eighteen years on the governing body of the Agricultural Organisation Society, and happen now to be its chairman, and am therefore closely in touch with the work of organising co-operative effort. One sees fairly clearly how difficult it is to make any class of English agriculturists combine for any mutual purpose, how worth while it is, and what almost unexpected opportunities of useful work still exist. Thanks largely to untiring work by Sir Leslie Scott--who gave up the chairmanship of the society on his recent appointment as Solicitor-General--the country is now fairly covered by societies for purchasing requirements co-operatively--principally fertilisers, feeding-stuffs, and seeds. There are also affiliated to the movement I have mentioned, many useful co-operative auction marts, slaughter-house societies, bacon factories, wool societies, egg and poultry societies, and fruit and garden produce societies (but not nearly enough), besides a thousand or so societies of allotment holders which, thanks largely to our friend, George Nicholls, set all the others an example in keenness and loyalty to their parent body.

The _ideal_ is that where a society exists the main raw materials of the industry shall be bought wholesale instead of retail, and the main products of the industry sold retail instead of wholesale; that thereby middlemen's and other profits shall be reduced to a reasonable figure, and that the consumer shall get the most efficient possible service with regard to his supplies. It is also the ideal that farmers and others shall learn more comradeship and brotherhood; that the big and small men alike shall become one community bound together for many common purposes, and that thus the cultivators of the soil shall lose that isolation and selfishness which is a reproach against them. The ideal is, however, not always realised. The farmer likes to have a co-operative society to keep down other people's prices, but, having helped to form a society, he does not see why he should be loyal to it if a trader offers him anything a shilling a ton cheaper. A good committee is formed, but the members think they hold their offices mainly in order to get first cut for themselves at some good bargain the society has made, and they start with the delusion that they are good men of business. Things, therefore, get into the hands of the manager, and it is astonishing how much more quickly a bad manager can lose money than a good one can make it. And if in these and other ways it is uphill work with farmers' societies, the work is still more uphill with small-holders. It is the breath of their nostrils to bargain individually, and if a society is started they will only send their stuff to be sold when they and every one else have a glut, ungraded and badly packed--and then they grumble at getting a low price.

But all co-operative work is abundantly worth while. And the field of co-operation is not limited to the purchase of supplies or the sale of produce. It ought to cover the use of tractors and threshing sets and the installation and distribution of power. And if agriculture gets a chance of settling down to a moderate amount of stability and prosperity, it would not be beyond the bounds of hope that part, at any rate, of the profits of co-operative enterprise should be used to develop the amenities of the common life of the community--to provide prizes for the sports and the flower show--the capital to start an industry for the winter evenings, and even seats for the old people round the village green.