HODGE AND THE SQUIRE.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 3, 5 January 1922, Page 7

HODGE AND THE SQUIRE.

BEDFELLOWS IN MISFORTUNE.

A CONSEQUENCE OF THE WAR. One revolutionary consequence of the war in England was the change in the j ownership of land. Some of the greatest j land owners, including even dukes and , carls, found their revenues so diminished! by taxation and estate duties that it be- j came necessary to part with some of their property in order to invest the money in more lucrative forms or even to spend it in payment of unavoidable expenditure, says "the London correspondent of the "Melbourne Age." They got, or could have got, excellent prices lor their land because its produce wiw fetching extremely good prices. But the slump has come and brought several complications in its train. That the slump in agriculture is of great magnitude is unquestionable. A comparison of the prices now being realised with those ruling, say. four and five years ago. when the" transfer of ownership was in full swing, is evidence enough. Practically every branch of farming and every district in the country has the same tale to tell. An authoritative report declares:—"The slump in prices of all products hav e brought the industry up against a problem of extreme difficulty." The industry itself declares that the collapse of prices is unprecedented in its history. The price of sheep fell by half in tlie course of this one season.'Farmers asserted that they were in large measure the victims of middlemen and retailers, who kept up the price to the consumer unduly and thus kept the demand for their products unduly low. There was probably H good deal in the complaint but the farmer bail no effective remedy, though he did, in a few- instances, compete with the retailer in the open market and undersell him. What makes the fall of prices so serious for many farmers is that they are largely the men who seized their chance a few years ago to buy their own farms from the hard-hit land ow'ncr. A small proportion had bought at reasonable prices and with ready money. For it is to the credit of some of the land owners—and these were usually men parting from possessions which had remained in their families for generations and had treated their tenants well —that they did not exact the fujl market value of their land, but gave their tenants an option of buying privately at an agreed figure rather than allow the land to go to auction. Rut the bulk of the new proprietors were less fortunate. Some had to buy willy-nilly: if they did not buy someone else would, and their tenancy would become precarious, or. at all events, more exacting. These bought in open market at a time when competition was keen, and not being able in the leaner period before the war to save toe purchase money, were forced to borrow. They arc paying a high rate of inteerst upon greatly enhanced prices—and the value of farm products, and consequently the value of the land itself, have dropped heavily already. For such as these—and they constitute the bulk of the new yeomanry— it is to be feared that if they are left to their own resources they will be forced to revert to their former status as tenantry. But if thov do «o, where will they stand? The" tenant farmer, like the! rural labourer who works for him. is a I man of nice discrimination. There are! two types of landlord in England, in the main. There is the owner who bought his land to let it for profit; and there is the ancestral type who treats his tenant with great indulgence because J they are all part of the old English feudal system —in a word, the Squire. The misfortune for the farmer in the- ( crash of the war is that it wa,s usually the former type of land owner who, sold out at the best market prices; he sold as he ha-d previously let his land.' that is, for profit, lie was not part of the feudal system. But the good land-: lord—good, that is. in the feudal sense I —was just the one who sold because he, had to sell, the war had made him, com-| parativelv. a poor man. And he was' generous enough to take as little as he could afford to. Now it is a curious fact that the English farmer as a class! has lost the habit of yeomanry. Once he was the mainstay of English agriculture, just a.s he was the backbone of the English feudal armies. In these days, he seems mostly to prefer to rent his land from a good landlord of the old type, relying pretty confidently upon him for generous treatment if times are bad and his rent gets into, arrears. Tt hag been almost a point of, honour with the squire, under this patriarchal system, to buy out the small, farmer-owner on generous terms when; the latter finds he can no longer make' his farming pay. If in tlie difficult days which seem to be ahead of the industry,' the new yeomanry look to find a purchaser, it will often look in vain for the' old squire, who has sold out to-pay his! rates and taxes. Another landlord of a newer type has taken his place. j The position of that other class of; farmer, known in England as the gentle-! man farmer—perhaps such a title is not' possible in any other country—is scarcely less grievous. TTe differs from, the former class mainly in that he keeps, his land, although he has enough of it to subdivide it. and does not let it to tenants. He has, apart from his farming, responsibilities and expenses similar to those of the great land owners, but on a smaller scale. Generally they farm for profit, because it is their principal source of income. They, too, complain that taxation is leading to their extinction. A return of income and expenditure from a number of typical estates in Lancashire showed that in 1019 the average income was .€20,3110. out of which taxation and rates absorbed £15.S00; and out of the balance the owner had to meet his personal expenses and the expenses of his establishment. Tn some cases the net result was a loss. For a number of smaller estates in 1021 the average aros? income was £1240. and the net income worked out at 1/5 in the pound, which compares with a net result of 10/ in the pound for investments in. say, war loans, after deduction of taxation. The prospect, from the land owner's point of view, was slimmed up by Lord Clinton, himself a considerable land owner:—"The English system of taxation dates back to Elizabethan days' when the bulk of wealth was in the j hands of the land owners. As a result' of the industrial revolution in the Iflth i century, much of that wealth has' passed into other hands from those of the land owners. Land owners, as a class, are in ' danger of extinction. Estates are rapidly disappearing. Very, many land owners have been compelled to sell up their estates a.s a consequence; of the war. If the land owners go, as a' class, it will be a disaster to the State. 1 for no class has given more voluntary, and uspful service to the community' than the. country squire." |