The Nineteenth Century , No 182, Apr 1892 [‎76v] (157/244)

642
THE NINETEENTH
April
countries in search, of work which is practically denied them at home
through the operation of the rent-earning system of land tenure. To
withdraw 100,000 land-workers from the agricultural industry of
these countries would enhance the price of the labour that would
remain. Wages would necessarily go up, while the influx of
labourers from the country into towns would be diminished, to the
advantage of town toilers. Farmers would grumble at a scarcity of
labour, and the certainty of a higher price having to be paid for the
diminished quantity. Ultimately, however, the landlord would have
to bear the burden of higher wages to land-labourers, as his sleeping-
partner interest in land cultivation will be that which will justly and
reasonably lend itself, in the form of lower rents, to the demands for
the better payment of agricultural working men. Protests will come
from this gentleman also, no doubt. This, however, will only lead to
a British Land Commission and the fixing of fair rents by judicial
process, as now obtains in Ireland; after submitting to which experi
ence the English, Welsh, and Scotch, like the Irish, landlord will
advocate a Purchase Act, or Landlord Belief Bill for Grreat Britain.
Whether by the process of being bought out, or of being taxed out,
the landlord must, of economic necessity, go. The sooner the better
for the industrial welfare of three countries. When he is replaced
by County or District or Village Councils, the anomaly of vested
interest barriers standing between idle acres and idle but willing
hands to work them will no longer mock the absence of a little com
mon-sense in our land laws.
When land is looked at and legislated upon as a medium for the
employment of labour—and consequently for food-production—and
not as a means of growing rent, or of providing a social status for a
landed aristocracy, it will be unnecessary to advocate the manning of
the land of Manitoba with Scotch crofters or English agricultural
labourers. It will be remembered when such a day arrives, that we
have inside this United Kingdom more soil lying idle, but capable
of giving work and growing food, than is comprised within the
kingdom of Belgium, with its 5,000,000 of an industrial population.
Such a day is rapidly approaching, no doubt. ' The land for the
people' period of legislation is dawning, and we shall soon see Mr.
Chaplin's Bill amended in the two directions in which it is most de
fective—to give to Village Councils the right of expropriating landlord
owners, and empowering them to administer the land in the way
which will best promote the industrial interests of the locality.
When the Community becomes the landlord, land will not be left
idle if willing hands are ready to employ themselves in its cultivation.
It will be recognised then that if the soil can do no more than give
employment to farmer and labourer, the all-round economic advan
tage to other industrial classes will be of far greater benefit to the
country at large than the social status of a single proprietor who can