Allotment schemes and the unemployed

In the 1880s Birmingham newspapers frequently ran articles that debated the ongoing dimensions of the ‘land question’. On 29 January 1885, Jesse Collings published a series of letters about the use of land in the Birmingham Daily Post. These letters help us to understand perceptions of land use at the local level.

Transcription:
Daily Post 29 January
ALLOTMENT SCHEMES AND THE UNEMPLOYED

To the editor of the Daily Post

(Left hand page)

Sir, - I have just read in the Daily Post the interesting letter of Mr Richard Fowler on the above subject. It would occupy too much of your space to notice all the issues raised in that letter - issues which involve, indeed, the whole question of the land tenure of England. I should be glad, however, if you would allow me to touch on one or two points.

Whatever the objections to any new scheme might be, I think it must be admitted that the present system has broken down all along the line. The labourer is half-starved and driven from the land, the farmer is being ruined, and the landowner, who in years past has gathered into his pockets the fruits of the labourers' toil and the farmers' capital, now finds that the geese who have been laying such golden eggs are either dying or dead. Mr Fowler advocates in the case of strong lands large farms of from 2,000 to 5,000 acres, cultivated by steam, in order to, what he calls, "farm at a profit." We need not discuss this point for the following reason. If it could be proved, which happily it cannot be, that a large tract of land, say half a county, could be farmed by some syndicate by the aid of machinery, and with the smallest number of penniless labourers, such a course would not be permitted, for it would mean, by the destruction of our peasant class, nothing short of the ultimate ruin of the country. Mr Fowler, and those who think with him, must be reminded that there is something else besides a money question involved, and that the conditions of the people, as an element in our national safety, has to be considered.

Again, Mr Fowler concludes that requisite machinery would not be used on small holdings. As a matter of fact, machinery is in general use in countries where small holdings exist. It is true that the machines are not owned by the cultivator, but are hired, the letting of agricultural machinery constituting in Continental countries a distinct trade. He might as well argue that because men cannot afford to keep carriages of their own, therefore cabs will not exist to supply the demand for locomotion. Mr Fowler is right in supposing that I moved and carried, "against the advice of the House of Lords," a clause in the Agricultural Holdings Act 1883, making the measure applicable to holdings under two acres. I did this because I know many cases - some of them of the most cruel character - in which, after having toiled on a piece of land and brought it into good heart, men have been immediately deprived of their holdings, and their labour confiscated, without any compensation whatsoever. Mr Fowler thinks the clause referred to is injurious, because landlords will be less likely to let allotments when they are subject to the operation of the Act of 1883. He mistakes the nature of my proposals. I would have the labourers' right to allotments and holdings to be quite independent of the will of the landlord, who should have no power to withhold them wherever they were required.

(Right hand page)

I will not go into the question of the relative merits of small and large farms. I was brought up among small farmers, and my knowledge and experience of small holdings and allotments, at all events, coincide with the views of the labourers, who, after all, are the true cultivators of the soil, and who, by their votes, I am thankful to say, are those who point to the undertakings of Feargus O'Connor, and particularly to such places as Snig's End, in Gloucestershire, as evidences of failure of small holdings. If these half-informed people had taken the trouble to enquire, they would have found that even in the case of Snig's End, where men committed the error of trying to live on small plots by growing cereals, distress was not more marked than in the case of the tenant farmers in the same district. Mr Fowler thinks that the land does not require do much manual labour as formerly. The fact is the land was perhaps never in such a filthy condition from the want of labour as it is at present. I know farmers who get twenty bushels an acre, together with a crop of rubbish, from their farms who, with sufficient labour and clean land might get fifty bushels. The land of this country is simply labour-starved, and has not half the number of men employed on it that it ought to have. Mr Fowler speaks of the profitless character of land not suitable for pasture. He is not, perhaps, aware that in countries from which we import some of our best butter there are dairy farms with not an acre of permanent pasture on them. Mr Fowler seems to wish to "give facilities to divide land," by making transfer easy, &c. Is he ready to go to the root of the whole matter, and join in the demand which the people of this country are on the eve of making - that no landowner shall have power, either during his life or at his death, to tie up agricultural lands in any way whatever?

I am, yours faithfully.
JESSE COLLINGS.
Edgbaston, Birmingham, January 28, 1885.

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