LORD CARRINGTON ON VILLAGE ALLOTMENTS

New Zealand Times, Volume LIV, Issue 9882, 13 April 1893, Page 4

LORD CARRINGTON ON VILLAGE ALLOTMENTS

At a meeting held at March recently in honour ot the Hun. A. G. Brand, M.P., Lord Carrington, who ...--■was the principal speaker, said no doubt the extremely low prices of stock and everything else had caused a great embarrassment, and the tenants of arable farms who were in difficulties before were now in a serious position. He had not time to go into the land question, but there were many charges with regard to the relief of burdens on land. Compulsory sale for small holdings ; compensation for improvements

fixity of tenure; English land courts ; - easy and cheap sale and transfer of land ; village councils ; the question of tithes, which materially benefitted the tenant farmers and labourers as well as landlords. In many cases reduction of rent in time would have saved the tenant, and would have prevented him becoming bankrupt. Prudent landlords all over the country had done this in hundreds of instances, and their tenants still remained and paid their

way i but there were, unfortunately, many large estates in England where the interest on the charges made on the estate either by the present owners or thoir predecessors, or by both, came to more than tbo income. The landlords could not reduce and the tenants had to leave or be mined. They heard a great deal of Lord Beaconsfield’s three profits to be got out of tbo land—the profits of the landlords, the profits of the farmers, and the profit of the labourers. He bad endeavoured in a small way, and in some cases not alto gether unsuccessfully, to reduce these profits to two, without any loss to the tenant farmers. One of his best tenants in North Bucks was complaining of the men leaving the villages, and in the next breath he objected to his (Lord Carrington’s) small holdings, as during harvest and other busy times he could not depend upon the exclusive and undivided labour of the men who were loft. His reply to him was that the only way to keep people on the land was to let them have a bit for themselves at the same price as a farmer pays for his land. (Cheers) Last winter at Winteringham, in Lincoln\sliire twenty labourers would have left the parish and gone into the town had it not been for their small holdings, and ho had applications for 120 more holdings ot from one to ten acres, which he hoped to ho able to meet at no distant date. He might, perhaps, be allowed to give a short statement, showing tho result of tho Winteringham small holdings. The one-acre allotments were usually worked in two pieces, half an acre of barley or wheat, and half an acre of potatoes. The average profit on the one-acre allot merits had been last year XI; in 1891 the average was £i 6s, in 1890 it was £5 18s, in 1889 it was £B 18s. This was after allowing for all expenses. On one holding in particular on which a careful accbunt was kept of the expenses and results, the profit last year was £6 10s. On the rood' or quarter of an acre allotments the profit for the last four years had been £1 10s for each allotment, after making deductions of rent, labour, and cultivation. The lowest, result recorded was one man who kept a careful diary of items, and, after allowing himself Is for each time <he went to work on his allotment, had 10a profit. The highest result was one

rood of potatoes where the allotment holder grew two tons, and retailed them, and made a profit of nearly £8 on the quarter of an acre As to the Spalding aero allotments, in a thirty-three acre field, the net profit, after paying all cost of seed and hire of labour, was £2ll. This estimate was based on an examination of the accounts of eight allotments. Of these the highest net result was £8 13s 3d on a crop of potatoes, and the lowest £3 9s 9d, on a crop of barley. The average profit was £G, Bs, which gave the total stated. As regarded the scarcity of labour, there was a lot of work to be done in harvest time, and where labour was short, with a little organisation, reapers might go about the country, like the Australian shearers did, and might work at a rate agreed upon between the farmers and tho Labourers’ Union. This would raise the village wage without taking tho bread out of the mouths of tho residents. In Australia many a small farmer and his sons paid their rent by going out shearing. A little organisation would keep tho Labourers’ Union as well as the villagers informed where work was to bo had, and funds for the journey raijdit bo advanced out of the Labourers’ Union to be repaid by the tenant farmers out of the wages earned to tho Union itself. Without in any wishing to make light of the present serious position of affairs he asked thorn to consider whether tho hysterical utterances of tho Earl of Winchilaca and Mr Chapman should be taken literally, and whether there was any reason for a national panic. Might they not hope to weather the storm of 1892 as they had successfully weathered tho previous storm in the present century ? (Cheers.)