The Land Problem

Philip Snowden

[Chapter V from the book, Labour and the New World, from Casell's Social Economics Series, published by Gassell and Company, Ltd., London, 1921]

Land is the source from which all material wealth is gained. The primary business of a community should be to develop to the utmost the possibilities of its land. That the land of Great Britain is not to-day utilized to anything approaching the full possibilities is a matter about which there is no dispute. Abundant evidence in support of that fact can be cited from the testimony of the landed and agricultural classes. Mr. R. E. Prothero, now Lord Ernie, late Minister of Agriculture, and one of the greatest living authorities on British agriculture, in "English Farming, Past and Present" (1912), says:

"Thousands of acres of tillage and grass land are comparatively wasted, under-farmed and undermanned. Countries whose climate is severer than our own and in which poorer soils are cultivated, produce far more from the land than ourselves."

Lord Bledisloe, who is better known as Mr. Charles Bathurst, in his pamphlet, "To Avoid National Starvation," published in 191 2, says:

"During the last twenty years the British area under arable cultivation has shrunk by no less than a million and a half acres or by the total area now under wheat. This means not merely that land has been and is continually being laid down to grass or tumbling down to couch and other weeds, but also that the population of the villages has been depleted ... grass or the many worthless weeds which look like grass constitute England's greatest eyesore, the most obvious and scathing condemnation of ^ort-sighted statesmanship in a country with a teeming industrial population."

That the land of this country is capable of producing much more than its present yield is proved by the fact that it did so in the earlier years of the last century. I had better quote the testimony of Mr. Lloyd George on this point, as at one time he was an acknowledged authority on the land question. Speaking in the House of Commons in December, 1920 on the Agricultural Bill, he said:

"Fifty years ago you had something between one-third and one-fourth of the population of Great Britain working in and around the land. When the war broke out you had something between one-ninth and one-tenth of the population on the land. It was not merely that agriculture had not increased in proportion to the rest of the population, but there had been a decrease by hundreds of thousands of those actively engaged in that occupation, and that meant a decrease of the population on the land by something like three millions. Last year we imported into this country for consumption (I have deducted what we re-exported); 500,000,000 pound sterling worth of food which this soil and this climate is capable of producing. It is a national weakness. It is a national folly. It is a national scandal."

It might be incidentally remarked that this statement was made on the fifteenth anniversary of Mr. Lloyd George's advent to Ministerial office, and such a confession as this about the state of our essential industry is a monument to his achievements in social reform.

When the first census was taken in 1801 the population of the United Kingdom was 16,345,000. At that time the whole of the food imports into the United Kingdom was sufficient to maintain a population of about 850,000 persons. In the first decade of the nineteenth century a population of sixteen and a half millions was fed on home-grown production. From 181 5 to 1840 there was a rapid development of British agriculture, and during this period the increase in the food supply practically kept pace with the increase in the peculation. For the period between 1831 and 1840, when the population had risen to about 26,000,000, the food production of the United Kingdom supported a population of twenty-four and a half millions. In the period just before the outbreak of war the home-grown food supply was sufficient for the needs of 17,500,000 persons out of a population of 46,000,000. The production of homegrown food had in a period of eighty years fallen by 30 per cent. Between 1881 and 191 1 the number of persons employed in agriculture in the United Kingdom fell from 2,574,031 to 2,262,172, and in the same period the number of agricultural labourers fell from 1,313,167 to 918,120, whereas in the same period the number of occupied persons rose from 14,897,884 to 20,159,356.

The Agricultural Returns for 1920 make very disquieting reading. In the first ten months of that year the imports of wheat into the United Kingdom amounted to 98,110,000 cwts., compared with 57,291,000 in the corresponding period of the previous year. The crops of wheat, barley, oats, potatoes and mangels in 1920 were in ail cases below the average. There might be some consolation to be gathered from these figures if other branches of agriculture had shown an improvement, but this is not the case. The number of acres under the plough in 1920 was 12,020,000, a decrease upon the previous year, while the acreage of pasture land remained practically the same as in 191 2. The total arable and pasture land in 1920 is 504,000 acres less than in 1914. Wheat and oats have fallen in area as well as in yield, leaving barley for the production of beer showing some increased yield. This decline is all the more remarkable when we consider the prices of grain in the respective years. In 1920 the average price of wheat was 90s. 7d., and in the previous year 72s. lod. Barley and oats and potatoes all realized increased prices. A painfully disquieting feature of the Agricultural Returns of 1920, taken in connexion with the decline of corn production, is the falling off in the number of livestock. The number of cattle in 1920 was 5,546,000, a decrease of 650,000 over the previous year. The number of sheep fell from 15,124,000 in 1919 to 13,378,000 in 1920. The number of pigs showed a slight increase, though the number was 500,000 less than in 1914.

The possibility of increasing the supply of homegrown food is proved by the fact that under the fear of starvation in 1918, 32 per cent, more corn was harvested in England and Wales than the average of ten years before the war. The wages, housing conditions and general standard of life among the agricultural labourers in pre-war days were so deplorable that this, the greatest of our industries, was officially classified as a sweated trade. In 1907 the Board of Trade made careful inquiry among all classes of farmers into the amount of wages paid in cash and kind. The result disclosed the fact that the average weekly earnings (that is, including the cash value of extras) was 17s. 6d. per week. It is important to note, however, that this figure refers solely to able-bodied adult labourers in regular employment. The average, therefore, for all classes of agricultural workers would be considerably less than this. The average was considerably raised by the higher wages paid to agricultural labourers in those districts where higher-paid industrial work was near at hand. The cash wages of agricultural labourers in Suffolk, Norfolk and Oxfordshire was less than 13s. per week, and the total earnings below 14s. Between the date of this inquiry and the outbreak of war the cash value of wages considerably declined owing to the increase in the cost of living. In 1912 wages were less than 3 per cent, above the figure of 1907, and the increase in the cost of living was 10 per cent.

That war-time measure, the Corn Production Act, the principle of which has now been embodied in permanent legislation, established a minimum wage of 25s. per week for agricultural workers. The District Wages Boards, have, however, in all cases fixed a minimum considerably in excess of this figure. Before 1914 the agricultural labourers were practically without trade union organization. In the last six years there has been a phenomenal growth of trade unionism in this industry, and the Agricultural Labourers' Union has now a membership of about a quarter of a million. It is the power of this union which is mainly responsible for the improvement in recent years in the wages and conditions of agricultural labour.

The bad conditions of agricultural labour in the United Kingdom have driven the workers from the soil to the extent already noted. The more virile and enterprising have sought an improvement in their lot by emigration, and in the ten years before the outbreak of war nearly a quarter of a million left the United Kingdom for non-European countries. Side by side with this emigration there has been a constant influx of land workers into the towns, tempted by the prospects of higher wages and by the attractions of town life. This migration from country to town has had twice cursed consequences. It has denuded the land of labour, necessitating the turning of arable land to grass, and has intensified the competition for labour in industrial occupations, greatly to the disadvantage of the town-bred population who have been unable to compete successfully against the more healthy and vigorous country-bred people.

This migration from the country has not been due, but in a very small measure, to the fascinations of town life. The agricultural labourer has left the soil on which he was born with great reluctance. The unsatisfied demand for allotments and small holdings affords evidence that the labourers would remain upon the land if they could see some prospect of moderate comfort. The man with any self-respect and ambition cannot be expected to remain content with a miserable wage and insanitary dwellings and the certainty of having to end his days in the poorhouse.

These are some of the facts of the agricultural side of the land problem. The causes of this deplorable state of things are many and varied, but the deep-rooted cause is landlordism. No land can be expected to provide an adequate return to the cultivator and at the same time maintain in luxury a landlord who contributes nothing, either by labour or capital, to the productivity of the soil. One of the chief deterrents of increased productivity by the farmer has been his knowledge that such an improvement would lead to an increase of his rent. A further cause of the decline of agriculture is the fact that it has been found to be more profitable to employ capital in commercial undertakings and in foreign investment. There was a time when the great landowner looked with disdain upon the manufacturer and trader. But that day has gone, and many of our blue-blooded aristocracy find a more profitable employment for the rents they receive from their land than in the reinvestment of them in land development. An examination of the shareholders' lists of British companies operating in land syndicates in the colonies and foreign countries discloses the names of a large number of big British landowners. The necessity of maintaining British agriculture as the basis of national prosperity has not been a sufficiently patriotic motive to compel the landowners to confine their interest to that need.

The conservatism and ignorance of the British farming class must be assigned as one reason for the backward state of British agriculture. The application of scientific methods to land culture has been opposed by the farming class. Only within recent years have co-operative methods begun to be applied in agriculture, and up to the present the progress has been lamentably slow. It was given in evidence by many witnesses who came before the Royal Commission on Canals and Waterways, of which the writer was a member, that the freight rates on the canals were unnecessarily high because farmers could not be induced to co-operate to buy their manures, lime and feeding stuffs in large quantities, and to join together to send their produce in bulk to the markets by which the cost of transport could have been considerably reduced. Inadequate means of transport and heavy railway rates have undoubtedly militated against the development of British agriculture. Preferential rates given to foreign producers on British railways have placed the farmer at a great disadvantage in competition with his foreign rival.

The lack of scientific training must be set down as one of the important reasons why British agriculture has declined. In every skilled industry except agriculture men are scientifically trained for the work, but the British farmer is quite content to jog along with his empirical knowledge, looking with contempt upon School Board education and all new-fangled ideas. If British agriculture is to be revived it will have to be realized that for its proper development wide scientific and technical knowledge is needed to an equal, if not a greater, degree than that required for the successful working of other industries. Surely human knowledge has not reached its limit in regard to agriculture? While invention and science have multiplied the productivity of manufactures by the hundredfold, agriculture has lost much of its one-time productivity.

Without going into a prophecy about the ultimate possibilities of agriculture, we have sufficient information to know that by the full use of present knowledge the productivity of English soil can be vastly increased. May I again quote the testimony of Mr. Lloyd George. In the speech to which I have already referred, he said:

"I come to the question of whether increased production is possible. Take countries with the same soil as ours. Take Germany or Denmark. The soil of Britain on the whole -- I am talking of the cultivatable area of Great Britain - compared with the cultivatable area of Germany or Denmark, is better than that of Germany or Denmark."

He then went on to cite the following statement from the Report of the Selborne Committee:

"On each hundred acres of cultivatable land the British farmer feeds from 45 to 50 persons, the German farmer feeds from 70 to 75 persons. The British farmer grows fifteen tons of corn, the German farmer thirty-three tons. The British farmer grows eleven tons of potatoes, the German farmer thirty-five tons. The British farmer produces four tons of meat, the German farmer four and a half tons. The British farmer produces seventeen and a half tons of milk, the German farmer twenty-eight tons. The British farmer produces a negligible quantity of sugar, the German farmer two and three-quarter tons."

In the Annual Report on Small Holdings for 1910 the Commissioners said: "it is no exaggeration to say that a considerable quantity of the soil of the country might be made to return at least twice as much as it does at present, and if the results of scientific research could be brought home to the agricultural community there is no reason why this result should not be achieved." In pre-war days the value of home-grown food supplies amounted to less than £[unreadable] per acre gross yield. The Report of the Land Inquiry Committee, published in 1913, gives a very large number of cases where by improved methods of cultivation the yield per acre has been doubled and quadrupled, but we need not labour this point with further illustrations. Mr. Lloyd George is quite right when he says that "the soil and climate of Great Britain is capable of producing ;£^50o,ooo,ooo worth of food which is now annually imported."

Some people contend that the soil and climate of Great Britain are not suitable for corn production, and that it is more profitable from the national standpoint to turn the land to other purposes for which the soil and climate are more adapted. In a world free from the menace of war and living under the beneficent operation of Free Trade there might be considerable force in this argument, though even then there would remain strong reasons for utilizing our agricultural resources to the utmost limit. Chief among which is the fact that agriculture is the most natural, healthy and interesting of all occupations.

We may now proceed to deal with the practical steps necessary for the revival of British agriculture. The first is that the land must be freed from the incubus of landlordism. The power of a landowner to appropriate the economic rent and penalize the cultivator, to determine the purposes to which the land shall be put, to depopulate the countryside to make a sporting ranch, must be destroyed. The community must reassert their legal and moral right to the ownership and unfettered use of the soil. It is just as important, nay indeed, more important, for the community to control the land that it may be put to its best purpose as to secure the economic rent. The method by which communal ownership of the land can be acquired has been described in a previous chapter.

With land nationalization there will probably be many different systems of land tenure and land cultivation. It is doubtful if the configuration of the surface of Great Britain is adapted for extensive farming. The intensive method is more applicable to a country like Great Britain. Where the surface is suitable for extensive cultivation this system will no doubt be employed with the aid of mechanical assistance. But the intensively cultivated small holdings will probably be the more common form of occupation and cultivation. Co-operation between small holders in the purchase of manures and other requisites and for the marketing of the produce must be adopted. To bring the producers into touch with the consumers methods of transport will have to be radically improved. I do not look to the development of either the railways or the waterways to be of very much help in marketing the lighter and more perishable farm products. The future of transport for such commodities is on the roads. I was led to this conclusion very definitely through my experiences as a member of the Royal Commission on Canals and Waterways twelve years ago. About that time I made a public speech in which I advocated the immediate expenditure of 10,000,000 poound sterling on the development of our roads to make them suitable for motor traffic. My remarks had the distinguished honour to win the approval of such an anti-Socialist journal as The Spectator, which said that my proposal was the first sensible suggestion which had ever emanated from the brain of a Socialist.

When this chapter was being written there appeared in the Times (December 14, 1920) the report of a speech delivered by Lord Montagu of Beaulieu before the Institute of Transport, in which he said, "The era of roads and road traffic has only just begun and is as yet in its infancy. Soon we shall see our roads made of some permanent or semi-permanent material, perhaps glass or concrete in some form, and the annual upkeep, the most important expense to-day, will therefore be reduced to a negligible figure." He estimated that five years hence there would probably be about two million motor vehicles of all kinds in this country, as against the present day estimate of 750,000. New trunk roads, reserved for motor traffic only, must be made between busy centres. With the development of road traffic the railways and waterways will be used more and more exclusively for heavy goods.

The risks of agriculture are greater than those of any other trade, and the realized product can never be estimated with anything approaching certainty. The state of the weather at particular parts of the year may make all the difference in the world between a good crop and a bad one. Though it is impossible to estimate the yield of a particular year's crop the average over a number of years remains fairly steady. This fact of the unreliability of Nature establishes a claim by the cultivators upon public assistance, and if the land were nationalized much of the objection to guaranteed prices for agricultural produce would be removed. But such a guarantee would have to be rigidly safeguarded by assurances that the land was efficiently cultivated, otherwise the guarantee would be a premium upon idleness and inefficiency.

Agriculture, too, differs from other industries in the fact that in many of its branches it is not a whole time occupation. Intensive cultivation on small holdings will have to be associated with other industries. Industrial villages should be built in the centre of an agricultural area, and in these villages industries should be set up which would provide part-time occupation for land workers in their off-time. The development of electric power production on a large scale, and improved methods of transport, would greatly facilitate the establishment of rural industries. These villages should contain all the facilities and amenities of communal life. Life in these villages should be so attractive that there would be no temptation to leave the country for the artificial and unnatural attractions of the towns.

A considerable part of the area of Great Britain is not suitable for cultivation, but much of this uncultivatable area is eminently adapted for afforestation. In the British Isles, previous to the war, there were about three million acres of woodlands and forests. These have been reduced by about one-third during the last six years. In the ten years before 1914 the importation of foreign timber amounted in value to over ;^40,ooo,ooo sterling. Our small resources of home-grown timber have been seriously depleted and the world's forests are being rapidly reduced. The world is faced with a timber shortage in the near future, and it is a matter of imperative necessity to take steps to replenish the diminished supplies. This question of afforestation has been talked about for years, but nothing practical has been done. Eleven years ago a Royal Commission sat upon this subject, and during the war a sub-Committee of the Reconstruction Department also inquired into the question. The Royal Commission recommended that nine million acres of land should be planted with timber trees. The sub-Committee's recommendation was more conservative, and advised that 1,180,000 acres should be planted within the next forty years.

We have in the British Isles an uncultivated area of 16,300,000 acres. Out of this approximately 4,000,000 acres are situated above the altitude of 1,500 feet, which is supposed to be the limit line for timber growing. There are, therefore, about 12,000,000 acres of land in the British Isles which at present are put to no profitable use, and which might well be planted with trees. Afforestation is definitely reproductive work, but the return is not immediate. It is because of the period of waiting for a return that private enterprise has neglected this sphere of industry. But the State, unlike an individual, never dies. Planting at the rate of 500,000 acres per annum, ten million acres would be afforested in twenty years. This work would absorb from five to ten thousand new men each year. It is calculated that when two million acres have been afforested some eighty thousand men would be settled on the land, and this number would be probably doubled by the employment which would be given to others in the manufacture of timber. Afforestation is a sound business proposition. The Royal Commission estimated that after eighty years the net revenue at the prices then ruling should be about seventeen and a half million pounds, which would represent 3f per cent, of the net cost. Looked at from every point of view, the State would then be in possession of property worth 562,000,000 pound sterling, or about 107,000,000 pound sterling in excess of the total cost involved in its creation. The afforestation of land enhances the productiveness of the adjacent areas, and it was recommended by the Royal Commission as a means of promoting the development of small holdings. The Commission made the important observation that more than any other apparent remedy afforestation would stem the tide of rural depopulation.

Great Britain has neglected afforestation more than any other country. At the present time the area of woodlands in the United Kingdom is but one-tenth of an acre per head of the population, whereas in Germany and France the area of forests per head is five times greater.

The organization of agriculture would have to be assisted to a great extent by the State and the county authorities. Men will have to be trained for agriculture as for a trade or profession. State and county agricultural colleges on a sufficiently extensive scale to give the necessary education and training will have to be created, and State and county farms for research and experiment will have to be provided. The Agricultural Department of a National Economic Council will be made responsible for securing the most productive and economical use of the land, and for the distribution of the produce to consumers in the most efficient way. The co-operation of the railway and road transport systems will have to be secured, and the enormous additions to the cost of distribution through the intervention of unnecessary middle men will have to be eliminated. The waste involved in the present chaotic and competitive way of distributing the food supplies is colossal. In the early morning half a dozen milk distributors can often be seen in the same street. The collection and transit of the milk supply is carried on in the same individualistic and wasteful manner. By organization through consumers* co-operative societies and the local authorities great economies could be effected which would ensure better remuneration for the producers and lower prices for the consumers.

The development of agriculture is a matter of urgent public importance from every point of view. There is first of all the primary obligation upon a community to develop to the utmost the possibilities of the land. The neglect to do this in the United Kingdom has led to the concentration of the population in large and unhealthy cities, to the physical deterioration of the people, to unemployment, to the annual loss of hundreds of millions of wealth, to the dependence of our population upon foreign supplies at the risk of starvation in case of war, to the unnecessary employment of labour in shipbuilding and at the docks, labour which might be more usefully employed in growing food and timber at home.

So far I have dealt with the land problem in its agricultural aspect, but there is an urban and industrial as well as a rural side. I think I had better let Mr. Lloyd George describe the evils of urban landlordism. Speaking during his land campaign in 1909 he gave the following telling illustration of how the landlords levy their toll upon industry:

"Some of you may know the South Wales coal-field. Let me give you one or two figures which will show what is done there. You get, first of all, land in very rich agricultural soil where coal is discovered. The landlord leases the property to somebody who has the necessary enterprise and capital for purposes of development. Somebody else faces the risk of a loss and the landlord takes 6d. a ton in the way of royalties. What happens when you come to the surface? You must employ workmen for the purpose of carrying on your mining operations, and the workmen must have homes. So they start building, and the landlord then says, 'Yes, certainly, by all means you may build, but you must pay a ground rent.' There is land now leased in these valleys in South Wales which within living memory (it may be only a few years ago in some cases) produced only is. an acre, where the landlord is now getting £yi or £^o per acre per annum, simply for permission to build a few cottages upon it. They are able to build on lease, and in about sixty years the whole of this land will fall into the landlord's hands."

It is unnecessary to cite instances of the increment of land values due to industrial enterprise and the growth of population. Every observant person is familiar with such instances. Twelve years ago the district in which this chapter is being written was agricultural country, the land let at agricultural rents. There were no facilities for rapid communication with London. A tube railway was constructed, and before it was completed land agents erected small wooden offices and began to advertise "eligible sites for building purposes." To-day the whole of that district is covered with buildings, and some idea of the increased income of the ground landlord (in this case the Ecclesiastical Commissioners) may be gathered from the fact that the ground rent upon one house and small garden occupying but one-tenth of an acre is 12 pound sterling a year.

To those who might be inclined to say that it was the capitalists who invested their money in the making of the tube railway who created the urban population in this rural area, I may reply that these capitalists did not make the population who are paying the increased land values, neither did they create the industries and occupations in London by which the population now residing in this district earns its living. What the capitalists did who made that railway was to exploit a public need in the anticipation of private profit. Further, there was no reason except the lack of communal organization, why this outlet for the congested population of London should have been left to private enterprise. A community alive to its obligations would have provided this and other facilities for the housing of the people.

Just one further illustration. Sir J. Tudor Walters, who is an eminent land valuer, in the course of a debate in the House of Commons on April 10, 1907, said with reference to Leicester, that he took the trouble some time ago to carefully collect figures from conveyances and documents as to the value of unbuilt-on land adjacent to houses, and he found that between 1872 and 1902 the value had increased to such an extent that the increase, if capitalized at 3 per cent., yielded a sum sufficient not only to pay the entire rates of the borough, but to leave a considerable sum of money for distribution among the ratepayers.

The urban land system is largely responsible for the serious housing situation. The more people a landlord can crowd on to an acre, the larger is the rent he is able to extort. The land being a commodity limited in supply, the less there is in the market the higher the value. Land urgently needed for industrial enterprise and housing is deliberately withheld from the market in order to force up the price of other sites. The writer was at one time a member of a municipal council. The land in that borough was mainly owned by one large landowner. The town had developed in one direction, obviously the least suitable direction. On inquiry from the agent of the landowner he was frankly informed that the land in the other direction was being deliberately kept out of the market until the less eligible district had been developed. "There would be no difficulty," said the agent, **in selling the more eligible land, but if we put that into the market first, we could not obtain the price we are now getting for the other."

A land system capable of such evils as these stands condemned. There is no possibility of dealing with the housing situation until the community is in full possession of the land to use and develop in the best possible way. The taxation of land values may be useful as an additional source of revenue to the State and the municipalities, but nothing short of the complete national ownership of the land will liberate the community from the terrible incubus of land monopoly. The landlord levies toll upon every commodity or service bought or used by the public. A not inconsiderable part of the capital of the railway companies is represented by exorbitant prices paid for land. Every ton of coal consumed pays its tribute of rent and royalty to the useless owner of the surface and the bowels of the earth. The hundreds of thousands of unemployed workmen who are shivering and starving in this hard winter are in no small degree the victims of the land system.

Land nationalization is the fundamental economic and social question.