AN ALTERNATIVE TO LAND NATIONALIZATION
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—In Mr. Christopher Tumor's view Peasant Pf6prietorship is the true bulwark against Nationalization. He says : "The only possible effective barrier is a multiplicity of small occupy- ing owners ; not men who become owners in a haphazard way, as happens now, but owners created under a sound system of land purchase. In devising any such system (and we have the successful experience of many countries to draw upon), the importance of giving the farm labourer a direct interest in the land must be kept to the front . . . we want a special provision of credit to enable every suitable labourer to become
full-fledged smallholder, owning his 30 to 50 acres of land."
The agricultural area of England and Wales—excluding rough grazings which are chiefly moorland—is between 25 to 26 million acres, which would only provide some half- million of labourers with holdings of fifty acres each, even if all the tenant farmers, all the yeomen farmers, and all the land- lord farmers were turned off the land. In making this estimate I venture to put the average size of the peasant farm higher than Mr. Tumor does, since, while on the rich land of the fens thirty acres—or even, in some cases, twenty acres—might suffice, yet on poor thin lands over chalk or on the sands of Norfolk fifty to one hundred acres would be necessary.
Half a million of peasant holdings would mean, say, a million votes, a number too small to have any appreciable influence on British economic policy. Thus, even if all peasant proprietors in the kingdom voted unitedly for Protec- tion they would have no chance of carrying this policy against the wishes of the urban voters, and without Protection no peasant farmer can grow wheat in this country at a profit— the fluctuations in its value are too rapid and serious. This year, for instance, its value has varied from 65s: in February, to 45s. in October. These fluctuations apply to everything which we agriculturists produce, whether corn, meat, wool, eggs or poultry, and to-day I am selling turkeys at ls. 4d. per lb. which last year would have made Is. 10d.—a really disas- trous drop in value to the small man who depends upon his Xmas sale of turkeys for a substantial portion of his yearly profit.
Whether one agrees with Mr. Tumor or not he has at least the courage of his convictions, while certain Progressive Conservatives base their policy of " Land Reform " upon expediency only, and have not the smallest idea how they are going to keep the squire and the farmer on the land, and at the same time flood the countryside with an army of peasant proprietors. Once accept the principle of peasant proprietor- ship, and you have to carry it out ruthlessly, or cause endless disappointment and dissatisfaction by turning applicants away.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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