RECLAIMED LAND FOR SMALL HOLDINGS
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] Ant,—The cost of small holdings to tax and ratepayers is so enormous, and the disturbance to the farming community in the course of their formation is so considerable, that the question arises whether the Government could not reclaim a million acres of moorland, or the Wash, or even the Goodwin Sands, instead of ousting good agriculturists from their. farms. Farmers are compensated, it is true, when they are disturbed, but small holders always want—quite natu- rally—the best cultivated land and this fact discourages nt,erprise.
For years I have advocated the purchase of a million acres of moorland at, say, VI an acre or less, and their conversion into grazing farms—with the help of basic slag—at a cost of, say, £20 an acre for draining, fencing and for erecting houses and buildings. Each holding should consist of 150 acres, since this amount of second-rate grazing land would be sufficient for a breeding farm and would give full occupation to a man and his wife, while the value of the land thus improved and equipped would be 114 an acre. Thus at a cost of twelve million pounds you would establish something like 7,000 fresh families on the land and have added a million acres to the agricultural area of the Kingdom.—! am, Sir, &c., Scarcroft, near Leeds.
C. F. RYDER.
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