with the drainage of a large part of the Zuider Zee, there is likely to be a very considerable addition to the cultivated land of the Netherlands. It is proposed to spend about 30,000,000l. in order to indike about 400,000 acres, and to have some of the land under crops within thirty years. The fact that the sea dike, carrying a railway and a road between North Holland and Friesland, will be twenty-two miles long, attests the magnitude of the enterprise.

Some of our farmers, when they are told about Holland, are too ready to imagine that their Dutch neighbours have an advantage in low-priced land and excessively low rates of wages. The author of A Free Farmer in a Free State' shows that in the Westland opposite Essex, rents, rates and wages mean to an agriculturist very much the same total expenditure as in the English county; and, whatever may be the case elsewhere in Holland, women are not employed on the land. In North Holland, we notice, purchase of grass land varies between 125l. and 250l. per hectare (2 acres), and the rental value between 67. 5s. and 127. 10s. Plough land is from 831. 68. 8d. to 2081. 68. 8d. per hectare to buy, and from 5l. to 107. 8s. 4d. to rent. Labourers get from 371. 10s. to 477. 16s. 8d. a year. Special market garden' land may be worth anything from 250l. to 500l. an acre. On a 110-acre farm near the Hague the author found the farmer paying 107. a year in taxes on a rental of from 41. to 5l. per acre. Five labourers were getting 168. 8d. a week all the year round, and a milkmaid 157. to 201. a year and board. Some three and a half tons of hay an acre were being raised from the land with cowhouse dung only. In the vicinity 27. 10s. to 3l. 16s. was being paid per boat-full (four or five single horseloads) of dung. It remains to be mentioned that fruit, vegetables, butter and cheese are increasingly sent to Germany instead of Great Britain, because, though they have to face heavy duties, better prices are got there. Nevertheless Holland and Denmark are still the two countries which send us most of the food supplies we receive from the Continent of Europe.

So far as we can judge, no writer who has been responsible for anything we have read about rural Vol. 225.-No. 446.

D

Denmark in English has spent more than six weeks there, and some who have written most confidently have been content with a much shorter stay. It is to the credit of Dr Frost that he was two years in Holland; and the present writer may claim to have written after several years' acquaintance with Dutch rural life. Mr Rowntree's book about Belgium is the result of four years' work in a country rather less than twice as large as Yorkshire. The way in which its author applied himself to obtaining first-hand data is most praiseworthy. On one particular enquiry he had a hundred clerks at work and used up 2 tons of record cards. Based on investigations conducted so conscientiously, Mr Rowntree's report on rural conditions in Belgium before the recent invasion inspires confidence.

In turning from Denmark and Holland to Belgium we leave wholly agricultural countries for one which, in spite of its small size, had some 116,000 miners and 35,000 quarrymen. In the half-century closing in 1896, the proportion of the agricultural population to the industrial fell from 25 to 19 per cent., and it has continued to fall. As is well known, the land of Belgium is much more cut up than that of any European country. Two-thirds of the holdings are under 2 acres; 94 per cent. of them are of less than 25 acres. The average holding in Denmark is thrice as large as the average holding in Belgium. Belgian land is split up by the laws of succession, by the density of a population-denser than in France-demanding land, and by the profit which accrues to landlords from what the Dutch call versnippering. Whereas 61 per cent. of the cultivated area of Great Britain is in areas of less than 20 acres, the percentage in Belgium is 40. Yet in the opinion of some good judges the cutting up is more alarming on paper than it is in practice.

As to ownership, nearly half the land is owned by holders with less than 100 acres; only 146 have more than 2500 acres. Three-quarters of the landowners of Belgium own less than 5 acres; 95 per cent. less than 25. There are also nearly 17,000 of the 'emphyteutic leases of rural land, which run from 27 to 99 years. About two-thirds of the country is cultivated by tenants; about a third (35 per cent.) by owners. This proportion

*

of ownership to tenancy is smaller than in France (where it is nearly a half), or in Germany or Denmark (nearly nine-tenths). In Great Britain 12 per cent. of the agricultural land is cultivated by owners. Evidently there is in Belgium a slight rise in the proportion let to tenants. A desire for ownership is undoubtedly felt. It is due to sentiment, a desire for independence, and a belief in the social status of the landowner; but the price to which land has risen stands in the way of a more general realisation of that desire. Mr Rowntree is disposed to think that English leases are slightly more favourable to the tenant than Belgian. He is not convinced that owned land is on the whole better worked than rented land. It is worth noticing that there are 32,000 acres of cultivated land owned by the communes. After special investigations Mr Rowntree thinks that the average value of agricultural land in Belgium, taking pasture and arable together, is close on 601. an acre, and the average rent 368. 3d., in both cases without buildings. Between 1880 and 1895 the value of arable fell 33 per cent. and that of pasture 23 per cent. By 1908 the average value of land had risen to within 81. an acre of the 1880 price, and the average rent to within 4d. an acre. It would appear that the recovery has been brought about by more intensive cultivation and the adoption of new crops, by co-operation, by increased belief in artificials and in agricultural science, and by improved prices.

Why does land fetch so much more in Belgium than in England? It is not the greater fertility of Belgium, Mr Rowntree replies, because nine of the ten arrondissements where the agricultural values are highest consist of that sandy soil which Laveleye called 'the worst in Europe.' Though fertilised by ten centuries of laborious husbandry,' said that Belgian economist, 'the soil does not yield a crop without being manured once or twicea fact unique in Europe.' Nor is it, in Mr Rowntree's opinion, the density of the population, though in Belgium there are 866 persons per square mile of cultivated area to 759 in England and Wales, and the number

* Mr Rowntree, whose figures these are, explains that they are of the years specified: Belgium, 1895; Denmark, 1901; Germany, 1895; France, 1892; Great Britain, 1905,

of agriculturists is proportionately thrice as large as in Great Britain. The principal reason is the demand for land, due to Belgium being a country of small farms, while Great Britain is a country of comparatively large ones. Also the greater part of the work on the land of Belgium is done by the farmers themselves or their relatives, that is, by persons directly interested in the best possible working of it. Then, when a farm is cut up for sale, there are always eager buyers on the spot, which is not always the case with us. Mr Rowntree believes that the Belgian farmer was able to pay so much more for his land than the English farmer because of Government help, with light railways, for example-'the transport facilities are better than in any other country in the world'-because of his own excellent cultivation and extremely hard work,' because of agricultural education, because of a 'world's record' in the amount of artificials used per acre, because of co-operation, and because the low rate of industrial wages prevents town life from offering an attractive alternative to a life on the land. As to help from tariffs, all cereals (with the exception of oats, on which the duty is 18. 2d. per cwt.) and potatoes and beet, were admitted to Belgium free. But there was a duty of 88. per cwt. on butter; and, though horses and pigs-Belgium keeps 101 pigs per square mile against 90 in Denmark-came in free, there was an impost of 1s. 7d. on cattle and sheep, and of 6s. per cwt. on meat. These duties have, no doubt, added something to the farmers' profits. Although Belgium fed a smaller proportion of her population than formerly, the value per head of the food imported was only 17. 18s. 2d. against 31. 14s. 10d. for the United Kingdom. (In Denmark the excess of exports over imports per head may be set down as 31. 13s. 10d.) The difference between Belgium and England, Mr Rowntree points out, is as striking in the case of eggs and vegetables, which were free from duty, as in the case of meat and dairy product, which were mulcted by the Customs. Belgium, after providing herself with vegetables and fruit, exported to the value of 710,000l. a year; the net annual import of the United Kingdom is valued at 2,638,000l.

Those who feel that attention cannot be too often directed to the necessity of increasing the production per

acre in Great Britain must continually point to the example of Belgium, which, with twice the proportional area devoted to wheat and oats that is given to these crops in England, showed a national yield per acre of 33.5 bushels of wheat and 54-5 bushels of oats against our 29-7 bushels of wheat and 41 bushels of oats.* Mr Rowntree speaks of one commune which produced 57 bushels of wheat per acre, and of a second, the oat-yield of which was 111 bushels. Apart from crops, it is to be remembered that Belgium had 156 cattle per square mile against 120 in Denmark and 97 in England.

The other side of the picture is, of course, that, with the value of land what it is, only very arduous toil enables the cultivator to make a living.' As to low agricultural wages, Mr Rowntree thinks that the average may be 1s. 7d. a day, with some perquisites. With regard to the financial indebtedness of the farmers, the author of Land and Labour' is of opinion that the facts contradict the assertion that the land of small proprietors is usually mortgaged to the hilt. The proportion of mortgage to the value of properties is 'comparatively small, less than one-sixth.'

It is sad to have to write in the past tense of so many matters in connexion with the agriculture of Belgium. We all cherish the hope that before very long the indomitable Belgians may once more be the masters of the destinies of their own country, the rural development of which has been for so many years an inspiration to every student of agricultural sociology.

J. W. ROBERTSON SCOTT.

The recently issued (1903-12) average is 31·74 bushels of wheat and 41.84 of oats.

†The Drysdale Dalmeny figures are-wheat, 64 bushels; oats, 120 bushels.