SMALL HOLDINGS IN BRITAIN

Marlborough Express, Volume XLV, Issue 107, 8 May 1911, Page 2

SMALL HOLDINGS IN BRITAIN

The dissatisfaction felt in the Mother Country with, the administration of the Small Holdings Act, mentioned in the cablegrams the other day, has been due in part to the failure of the Board of Agriculture to deal effectively with cases of intimidation. The Act came into operation at the beginning of 1908, and within six months an area of about 300,000 acres had been applied for by men and women who wanted to secure small sections of productive land. An official report stated that "a large proportion of the applicants appear to be thoroughly suitable persons^ and the amount of capital they possess is greatly in excess of what was generally anticipated." Many of the small holders soon found, however, that they had incurred the displeasure of the landed aristocracy by attempting to induce the County Councils or the Board to purchase compulsorily suitable areas of land. In Lancashire and Wiltshire men who had made application under the Act were evicted by their landlords, and the publication of the details by some of the London newspapers brought stories of similar happenings from other counties. One man in Cheshire, for example, applied for a holding, and was promptly served with notice to quit his cottage and little garden. He managed to get the ear of the Board of Agriculture through a Liberal member of Parliament, and was provided with a section, but it cannot be doubted that thousands of small men were deterred from asking for assistance under the Act by fear that they wfcrald lose their home®. "If the Government really desires the Small Holdings Act to be a success," writes the chairman of the Independent Labor Party in the Daily News, drastic changes in administration must be made by the Board of Agriculture. The fear of victimisation and eviction must be removed entirely from the minds of the laborers." It seems, indeed, a, pity that a law which promised to be of enormous, assistance to the British workers should be spoiled in the handling by the controlling authorities.