Communal land

“ The more these are and must be closed, the more intensely precious does the common or forest, safe for ever from inclosure, become. It is not only the suburban common, it is the rural also which is of value to us as a people.
Nor does the allotment scheme, admirable as it is in giving the landless classes a share in our common soil, in the least degree meet the need for beauty. Under all the schemes for inclosing rural commons, it is probable that henceforward provision will be made for field-gardens. ”

“ When you bring together the Scotch township which is nothing more than an association of tenants, the Russian mir which seems to have long been only an association of serfs, the Servian village which, on the other hand, is a household community, and the allmend or commons which are a consequence and accompaniment of private property, you confuse things which are absolutely different, and which, moreover, are very far removed from the system of community in land that you are anxious to prove. ”

“ So long as a village community leads a purely pastoral life, and possesses an abundance of land, there is no reason why the individuals or the families of which it is composed should divide the land into private lots, and there are very potent reasons why they should not adopt such a course. ”

“ There are villages where the old men still remember—how could they forget it?—the year when the commons finally “went in.” Yet there is hardly a feature in the plain man’s view of the nature of a common which corresponds to the reality as it was used by our ancestors, and as it is used to-day by communities whose land system has followed a different course of development from our own. He thinks of a common as land which, like a municipal park, “belongs to the public,” land which any one may use and any one abuse. ”

“ That all sorts of work which enters, so to say, in the routine of village life (repair of roads and bridges, dams, drainage, supply of water for irrigation, cutting of wood, planting of trees, etc.) are made by whole communes, and that land is rented and meadows are mown by whole communes—the work being accomplished by old and young, men and women, in the way described by Tolstoi—is only what one may expect from people living under the village-community system. ”

“ Such, however, has been the growth of public opinion, that we may assume that Parliament would not sanction the inclosure of a common in the near neighbourhood of any large and populous town. But there seems some danger lest our legislators and the public should not duly consider how rapid is the growth of many towns, and that some which are not large and closely packed now may in a few years become so, and may need commons in their vicinity; nor how in many places suburb stretches beyond suburb as year succeeds year, and thus the town approaches the commons which once were rural. ”

“ If, after this assessment the land increases in value as a result of political advancement or social progress, such unearned increment should be shared by the people in the whole county, and should not be kept by the landowners as private benefit. ”

“ And there is a reason why even, the still more distant rural commons should if possible be saved from inclosure. Every year, in many country neighbourhoods, population is increasing, and houses for letting are being built ”

“ Every village shall possess a common for the general good, and the chief of the village shall take care that it is kept in good order, so that posterity shall find it uninjured.
7. Every village shall have a market-place. All the rest of the land shall be for tillage and forest. No one shall fell trees without the consent of the community, or without the knowledge of the forester; for the forests are general property, and no man can appropriate them. ”

“ We have already indicated the processes whereby the economic situation, religious life, public education, the need of local government, and the desire for recreational facilities, are inevitably drawing the people of the countryside together at the natural centers into communities. The locality group is again recognized as essential for the best organization of rural life. But the new rural community is a voluntary group, it is not determined by common control of the land or by common subjection to a feudal lord as was the village community of the old world ”

“ Municipal politics is conducted as in some sort a public or overt extension of that private or covert organization of local interests that watches over the joint pecuniary benefit of the local businessmen. It is a means ... of safe-guarding the local business community against interlopers and against any evasive tactics on the part of the country population that serves as a host.... The country town is a product and exponent of the American land system. In its beginning it is located and ‘developed’ as an enterprise of speculation in land values ”

“ Does it cease to be common because some equal division is made by which the members of each adjacent family dip their vessels into it, and take out as much as they want? A tract of land is held in common by the inhabitants of a neighboring village. Does it cease to be a common property because each villager uses it for his particular beasts? ”

“ Under this clause half the rural districts of England have acquired urban powers which, being exercised by persons having for the most part an interest in urbanizing the district—jobbers in residential land ripe for development, tradesmen, contractors and local builders—have been used as an instrument to prevent the erection of dwellings suitable for agricultural laborers and to tie the hands of landowners willing to provide such dwellings. ”

“ It should consist of a central nucleus of houses, each with its garden, the churches, schools and public buildings that are requisite, the manufactories and workshops that supply the needs of the community, the shops for sale of those things not produced at home, and all necessary places of amusement. Around this residential centre should be sufficient agricultural land to furnish all the farm products that will be consumed by the community itself. ”

“ Whereas a liberal land policy would not only have engendered a spirit of providence, but have offered an inducement, and have proved a stimulus, to the country's settlement by a thriving rural population. ”

“ To secure the widest distribution of public lands in limited quantities among settlers for residence and cultivation, and thus make the greatest number of individual homes, was the primary object of the public-land legislation in the early days of the Republic. ”

“ I am very sure that the feeling of the boroughs is in favour of extensive changes in our land system, on the ground that the labour in the towns is depreciated by agricultural migration, and that this latter is the effect of an antiquated land system. ”

“ But it could not stand after rent and wages had become possible, and when it was seen that by cultivating larger farms, and by the extinction of common rights, the land might be turned to better account for the community generally. New circumstances, possibilities, and requirements necessitated a new system. The object of the land is to provide food for those to whom it belongs, that is to say, for the community to which it belongs. ”

“ Besides this plow land, there was a definite area of grazing land, known as the commons. With the coming of enclosures this open field system was abolished. (By the term ‘enclosure’ is meant that all the strips of any one man scattered throughout the holdings of the village were given to him in equivalent in a single, consolidated acreage, which he had to fence, ditch, etc. Or again, the term applies to a large district, as very frequently the commons, that was fenced in for the wealthy landowner’s sheep-pens.) ”

“ Of the three kinds of land the common mark, save where curtailed or usurped by lords in the days of feudalism, has generally remained public property to this day. The pleasant green commons or squares which occur in the midst of towns and cities in England and the United States most probably originated from the coalescence of adjacent mark-communities, whereby the border-land used in common by all was brought into the centre of the new aggregate. ”

“ He consolidated the land laws, and added provisions which gave a decided impetus to the settlement of land in many districts and helped working men near large centres to obtain small areas on village settlements. ”

“ It must be understood that each village, being now provided with the equivalent in one tract of its many parcels, is still at liberty to regard the tract as communal property. It is under no obligation to divide it into individual holdings. But any family in the village may demand that its just share be given it in perpetuity, in which case the matter is either amicably arranged in the village, or is settled by government authorities. ”

“ What is attempted is chiefly to show how four square miles of land may be so divided that its occupiers may be conveniently gathered into a village; and it may fairly be assumed, that, except in the more remote grazing and grain-growing regions, the population (including laborers) would generally be about one household for each sixty acres. In the more thickly settled regions, this limit is exceeded now; and, as population increases, this condition will extend. ”

“ I think it is. Construing together the granting words and those respecting the lieu land selection, it is evident that one of the 'other claims or rights' excepting land from the operation of the grant was 'occupation [occupied] by homestead settlers.' The word 'occupied' and the idea conveyed by it were foreign to the homestead law at date of this act, as an essential element in the reservation of land. ”

“ Englishman, bred on and to the land, might cherish the hope of one day calling a corner of it his own, at least as the tenant of a landlord without personal interest in the degradation of his dependants.” Here is the sole asset we possess in the work of rural revival. Parliament has been attempting by legislation to give to some select persons in the villages direct access to the land. The labourer to-day is slowly and doubtfully realising that a law has been passed which is designed to work for his benefit. ”

“ The Town Planning Act gives cities and towns the power to purchase land and allot it, to tear down undesirable buildings, to co-operate with any workingman's association for improving and erecting dwellings, and to buy the necessary land for making improvements of all kinds. ”

“ The old village was under the shadow of the squire and the parson, and there were many ways in which these powers controlled and hampered its pleasures and habits: there were quarrels, too, between farmers and cottagers, and there are many complaints that the farmers tried to take the lion’s share of the commons: but, whatever the pressure outside and whatever the bickerings within, it remains true that the common-field system formed a world in which the villagers lived their own lives and cultivated the soil on a basis of independence. ”

“ This mode of sub-dividing small portions of inferior land is bad enough certainly, and to propose the establishment of villages, in a pastoral country, for the benefit of men who can neither betake themselves to the cultivation of the land nor to commerce for earning the means of subsistence, is doubtless a refinement in policy solely to be ascribed to the enlightened and enlarged views peculiar to the new system. ”

“ In such compact communities cooperation becomes necessary to provide for needs that are not felt in more rural districts, such as paved streets, sewers, public water supply, fire and police protection, and so on. A separate government becomes necessary. The people of such communities may appeal to the authorities of township, county, or state, for incorporation as a village, borough, town, or city. ”

“ If there is a town near the boundary the land reaches right up to the boundary of the next town, but if the town is some distance from the forest boundary, then the ground between the boundaries is neutral land in which the folk of both towns can hunt, cut timber, etc., as they please. Within the boundary the people of the town are free to make their farms and build their houses where they like, provided the land is not already occupied by someone else. Priority of occupation is the only title recognized. There is no such thing as unclaimed land. ”

“ Their own locality or town is no more to them economically than any other part of the world-market, and very little more in any other respect. The mediæval idea of a town, on the contrary, was that of an organization of groups into one organic whole. Just as the village community was a somewhat extended family organization, so was, mutatis mutandis, the larger unit, the township or city. Each member of the town organization owed allegiance and distinct duties primarily to his guild, or immediate social group, and through this to the larger social group which constituted the civic society. ”

“ Then, land had been set aside in each township as Clergy Reserves and for the support of common schools, So much uncleared land coming between the farms of settlers made it difficult to construct roads and fences, and separated the farmers so much that they could not form school districts without a great deal of trouble and inconvenience. ”

“ As members of the village communities, they hold possession and will ultimately obtain absolute ownership of more than half the soil of the country, excluding the domains of the state. In the same capacity they exercise a degree of local autonomy greater than that which is vested in the communes of France. ”

“ As thus seen, the act required the entry of land settled upon and occupied, to be in trust 'for the several use and benefit of the occupants thereof, according to their respective interests.' The very notion of land settled upon and occupied as a town-site implies the existence of streets, alleys, lots, and blocks ”