Land agent

“ It may be as well to detail for readers other than Irish what are the avocations of a land agent, especially as the class in Ireland will probably soon be as extinct as the dodo.
The duties of an Irish land agent comprise a great deal of office work, drawing up agreements with tenants, receiving rent, superintending agricultural and all landlords' improvements, sitting as magistrate and representing the landlord when the latter is absent at poor-law meetings, road sessions, and on grand juries. ”

“ Embracing the calling of a land agent, he passed some years in learning the duties of that profession, obtaining in 1841 the gold medal of the Royal Agricultural Society for an essay on ‘Reclamation.’ After holding some subordinate positions he was appointed agent to the Shirley estate in county Monaghan in April 1843. ”

“ If a farm consists of 200 or 300 acres of land, it is possible for the agent to convey the purchaser over the farm in such a way as to prevent the least desirable portions being seen. If the farm has attracted the seeker of land, he should not purchase until he has made another visit, preferably some days or weeks after the first one. ”

“ From the county agent the settler gets the true condition of the land, climate, and possibilities in general, of the particular region into which he is going. Too often, though, the settler is met at the train by the real-estate agent, and this agent does not let his prospective buyer get in touch with anyone else until after he has been sold a piece of land. After the settler has bought his land the real-estate man thinks that his connection with him has ceased, and he is no longer interested in him other than to see that the promised payments are paid when due. ”

“ Odell and the State Land Agent continued to do a flourishing business in the matter of making selections based upon alleged mineral land, and secured the issuance of certificates of purchase to something like 70,000 acres of this character, besides about 20,000 acres that were selected upon other base. ”

“ The result is that every tenant has been running down his land and letting it go out of cultivation, for the tenants know the commissioners value the ground as they find it, and a premium is thus, of course, put on neglecting the soil. ”

“ There are also cases where a settler has secretly become a regular agent of the land company, receiving from the latter a salary in addition to a commission on each piece of land sold through him. In such cases the agent, known to the prospective buyer only as an ordinary settler, is in a position to get much higher prices for the land than a regular agent. ”

“ Land agents seem to have been first employed to make formal valuations towards the end of the eighteenth century, and about the same time plans of the estates were obtained, some of these, made before the enclosures, showing the land scattered in many minute pieces, are very curious and interesting. ”

“ The tendency has gradually been to consolidate and amalgamate land agencies, for as the difficulty of getting rents increased, more competent men of experience and judgment were needed by the landlords. ”

“ Then he says, 'These agents are all shopkeepers, and most of them are proprietors of land themselves, or act as land agents for others.' There are only four agents altogether, and there are only two of them who are proprietors of any quantity of land. ”

“ And if the settler has kinsmen and friends willing to join with him, he can claim for himself and each of them 100 acres of land, and pay for it by the work of road-making in the new country, so that in four years, if the work set by the Commissioners be executed, each man who has been one year resident and has brought ten acres into cultivation, becomes, ipso facto, owner of the whole lot of 100 acres. ”

“ Taking the above unity as a basis, and observing the distinction which must be made between grazing land, or that which is proper for raising stock, and farming land, without the facility of irrigation, this law grants to the contractor or contractors for the establishment of a new settlement, for each hundred families which he may introduce and establish in the state, five sitios of grazing land, and five labors at least, the one-half of which shall be without the facility of irrigation ”

“ Those acts also provide that when, in the opinion of the president, 'a departure from the ordinary method of surveying land on any river, lake, bayou or watercourse, would promote the public interest,' the land may be surveyed, and sold in tracts of 2 acres in width, fronting on any such water, and running back the depth of 40 acres. ”

“ The labourer would engage to clear a plot of land, to the extent of forty or fifty acres, at a certain number of acres each year, on condition that rations were supplied and other assistance given by the employer for the first year or two, and that the whole of the land, as fast as it was cleared and fenced (the employer finding posts and rails) should be cultivated by the tenant for his own profit for a fixed number of years, rent free. ”

“ A number of farm lots are selected by the company. On each of these lots there is designated a place for the farm buildings and the garden. A simple, inexpensive house and a barn are built by the company on a small clearing, usually facing the main road. At present the company has ceased to clear any land for agricultural use for the reason that if there is a piece of cleared land the new settler is apt to expend his main efforts on cultivation of this cleared land, neglecting the clearing of more land. ”

“ In England, speaking generally, agricultural farms are let by the owners fully equipped with buildings, fences, farm roads, and other improvements necessary for the proper working of the holding. The tenant contracts to pay a rent for the farm so equipped, and if he finds that the particular holding does not suit him, he gives it up at the end of his contract term and goes elsewhere. ”

“ The bog land to be reclaimed requires drains three feet deep every six feet of land.
To trench up a little field into ridges six feet apart, to gather stones out of a little field sufficient to surround it with a four feet high stone fence, to grub out and burn whins, to make all the improvements with your own labor, and then to have your landlord come along with his valuator and say, "Your farm is worth double what you pay for it; I can get thirty shillings an acre for it," and to raise the rent to its full value, which you must pay or go out. ”

“ To insure the success of the settlers and the settlement, the company proceeds as follows: The most careful study is made of the tract of [Pg 53] land which the company intends to acquire for colonization purposes. Not only is the tract of land closely looked over by the company's officials, but land experts, such as soil surveyors, are engaged to examine the land from the viewpoint of its agricultural possibilities. Federal and state surveyors' reports are also used in considering the possibilities of the land. ”

“ Thus the tenant-farmer is willing to pay six, sometimes seven per cent. annually, for twenty years, for the increased capacity of production which drainage gives to the farm he cultivates. At the end of that period the Government is paid by the landlord, and the landlord by the tenant, and the tenant by his augmented crops for the whole original outlay upon the land. ”

“ These land agencies are, in a thousand ways, busying themselves in the securing of further lands for speculative purposes. The days of wholesale grants having gone by, they are turning their attention to the lands of the individual settler, and under their tutelage clerks, teachers, town men and women, hired laborers, men who do not know wheat from barley or rye from flax, are filing upon the last of the tillable public lands. ”

“ Without the water the land is worthless, and without the land my water-right is practically worthless—to me. To control that 32,000 acres of desert I will have to put up the purchase price of $40,000 for the men I induce to file on the land, and after paying the filing fee of $5 and the initial payment of $20 on each of the fifty applications for the land, I'll be in luck if I'm not left stranded at the State Land Office. ”

“ In those parts which are better for cattle and sheep than for grain, what does a man do if he has only 160 acres?
If a settler should desire to go into stock raising and his quarter-section of 160 acres should not prove sufficient to furnish pasture for his stock, he can make application to the Land Commissioner for a lease for grazing lands for a term of twenty-one years, at a very low cost. ”

“ The use of land shall be permitted only within the framework of land use planning. The ownership and use of agricultural and forestry land exceeding one hundred hectares shall be reserved for cooperative and public institutions and churches. The sale of land and the granting of rights of use to foreigners shall be subject to approval. (2) If the value of land increases due to its conversion into building land by planning, the holders of municipal autonomy shall be entitled to compensation for the increase in value. ”

“ In the same spirit licenses for the introduction of new r industries were authorised, not to exceed a hundred in a year, under which twenty acres of suitable land could be hired at a nominal rent and purchased at £1 an acre as soon as the industry for which the license had been granted was duly established. It was confidently asserted by persons of experience that there were already in the country men accustomed to many of the industries we hoped to introduce. ”

“ At present agricultural farms may be selected of not more than 1280 acres, and the rent is fixed by the Land Board, not being less than threepence per acre per annum. A licence is issued to the selector, who must, within five years, fence in the land or make permanent improvements of a value equal to the cost of the fence, and must also live on the selection. ”

“ The character of the lands in the public domain is decided by the surveyors who execute contracts from the General Land Office for subdividing or staking the country off into townships and sections, according to our American system. ”

“ Such statutes are universally in force and are general in their application, facts of which the land owner must take account in providing for the management of his property and safeguarding his interest in it. ”

“ Not so with the land. A few years' development may change farm land right of way into city right of way, surrounded by factories, or it may change desirable residential property adjacent to a road into slums. ”

“ It is a tract of land gained from the sea of about ten or twelve hundred acres, banked round in three divisions, and made arable, on which are built about twenty farmhouses, which form almost a new world. This land is the property of the government; a small sum is paid on entering, and a yearly ground-rent, and then it is the property of the purchaser for ever. ”

“ Our pioneer settlers were offered homes of one hundred and sixty acres each on condition of occupancy and improvement, but the speculator could throw himself across their track by buying up large bodies of choice land to be held back from settlement and tillage for a rise in price, and thus force them further into the frontier, and on to less desirable lands. ”

“ In case a man wishes to purchase land in the South-western Division on cash terms he can acquire not more than 1,000 acres in an "agricul­tural area," or 5,000 acres outside of one, for a minimum price of 10s. per acre. He must, however, fence the land within three years of the date of survey, and execute improvements to the extent of 5s. an acre within seven years, or the Crown grant will not issue. ”

“ The company's right of selection in the forest reserves is limited to such land as would, under the practise of the Land Office, have been available to individuals under the public land laws either for clearing and subsequent cultivation, or for grazing, or for any other purpose commonly classified by the Land Office as coming within the preemption and homestead laws. ”

“ The owner has acquired by location and purchase, title to several thousand acres of land, that is all fenced and much of it highly cultivated. It consists of a strip of land one mile wide and ten miles long, which is doubly valuable because of its productiveness and as the key that controls a fine open range. ”

“ Many persons write me that I say it is necessary to get good land near population or with cheap and assured transportation facilities—and that it must not cost more than it is worth for gardening. "I find," they say, "that such acres are held as 'lots' at wildly speculative prices" and they ask "Where can I find such land?" ”

“ Good land in a rainy district will yield an inferior rent to land of the same quality under a more genial sun and a drier atmosphere. Then the water connected with the farm will come under examination. Will it be capable of creating water-meadows, which have such a lifting power [pg 635] for rent in many parts of England? The fertility, too, of the several fields of the farm will differ. The intelligent tenant will feel himself called upon to estimate what amount of crop, what quantity of food for cattle, with his skill and capital, he may reasonably expect to produce. ”

“ If the requisite improvements were not made at the expiration of ten years the licensee was allowed to hold the land upon a rental of one shilling per acre, but no Crown grant was issued until the improvements were made. Vineyard, orchard, or garden lands were sold in blocks of not less than ten acres at ten shillings per acre. ”

“ A careful inquiry is made into their "profits," but the value of the land itself is not inquired into. The value of the land may have increased three, four, or five times in the course of a century, but the owner of the soil still pays the original rate, and grows rich while he sleeps. ”