Land company

“ If a joint-stock company were to demonstrate that 25l. of capital per acre applied to the cultivation of 1,000 80acres was a profitable speculation, would that have any tendency to lower the value of land?
I believe that some of us will live to see the joint-stock principle introduced into farming, or rather applied to the ownership and cultivation of the land. ”

“ All this is done by the company not only for the sake of the settler himself, but mainly for the sake of the business interests of the company, since the success of the settlers on the company's land is the best advertisement of the company's business. It creates confidence in the company among the searchers for land and helps to increase the volume of business and the profits. Such companies are of rather recent origin and as yet are comparatively few in number. Their appearance means specialization in the land-development business. ”

“ The acquisition of ownership in fifty acres through the head right was not even in the time of the Company confined to the shareholder. Any one who had emigrated to the Colony, or who had carried or sent over another person, became entitled to the same area of land. ”

“ The announced object of the company is first to bring the whole of the land under 349good cultivation, at the rate of five thousand acres or more annually, and when this is accomplished to divide the whole into two hundred and fifty farms to be sold to the employees, each provided with suitable dwelling-houses and buildings, all to be paid for by the purchasers in easy annual installments ”

“ It is easy now to obtain good counsel, and many of our landlords would willingly undertake such operations occasionally, but for the fixed notion that every improvement of land should at once pay, whereas the St. George’s Company is to be consistently monastic in its principles of labour, and to work for the redemption of any desert land, without other idea of gain than the certainty of future good to others. I should best like a bit of marsh land of small value, which I would trench into alternate ridge and canal, changing it all into solid [9] land, and deep water, to be farmed in fish. ”

“ The whole to be drawn for by lot. A shareholder having several [15] shares, to receive the whole wherever his first lot may happen to fall. And, as matter of conveniency in occupying and enclosing, and also as some recompense for their pioneering labours, the first expedition shall have the first choice of the town and suburban land, but not of the country land. Any residue of territory to be disposed as a general meeting of the shareholders shall determine. ”

“ And as we have paid you all the land we have, we offer you for this balance $10,000 in money.
'The company should understand that the balance of 9,576 acres is the land, portions of which it has been settling with our individual citizens for, and there is included in the 9,576 acres all the lands the company has sold to citizen settlers at $1.25 per acre. ”

“ The mode hitherto pursued of selling lands has been very expensive to the United States. Perhaps, on inquiry, we shall find, that the specie it has cost us in getting the land surveyed and sales completed, would have purchased as many certificates as we get for the sale of the land. The lands are also proposed to be sold in too great quantities. It is very difficult to form a company for the purchase of a million acres. ”

“ To construct on such land for the use of such employees and their families houses and all other necessary or convenient facilities, upon such conditions and at such price as may be determined by it, and to sell, lease, or exchange such houses, land, and facilities upon such terms and conditions as it may determine. ”

“ They all knew that out-of-doors there was from time to time a great outcry raised about what was called the "monopoly of land", and, in support of that cry, the wildest and most reckless exaggerations and mis-statements of fact were uttered as to the number of persons who were the actual owners of the soil. ”

“ Mining corporations and other institutes own about 7 million acres.
The peasants, who until 1861 were mere serfs and had no ownership of any kind, being supplied with their necessities by the landed proprietors, still largely supply themselves in the northern provinces by the exercise of rights of user from the public domain on designated areas. In the central and southern provinces, farm and forest land, the latter to the extent of nearly 40 million acres, were given to them in communal ownership. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There remain the following alternatives: land may be rented for a fixed sum of 66 money per acre, to be paid when the crops are sold, or for a fixed quantity of produce, so many bushels of corn or so many pounds of cotton being paid for every acre; or, more commonly, land may be rented on some form of share tenancy by which the risk as well as the profit is shared by both tenant and landowner. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If proprietors find it most profitable to let their lands in large lots, either for agriculture, for cattle, for sheep, or for deer, there is no reason why they should not do so, and there is no doubt that in the end what is most advantageous to the proprietor is so to the tenant, and vice versa, as also to the country at large. If, on the other hand, it be found that letting land in small lots is more profitable than the other practice, few proprietors, we daresay, would hesitate to cut up their land into suitable lots. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The stock-raising homestead law, as it is called, permits a man to make entry for not more than six hundred and forty acres of unappropriated land which shall have been designated by the Secretary of the Interior as "stock-raising land." Cultivation of the land is not required, but the holder is required to make "permanent improvements" to the value of a dollar and twenty-five cents an acre, and at least one-half of these improvements must be made within three years after the date of entry. ”

“ Mining leases (not auriferous) not exceeding 200 acres, nor less than twenty acres, were granted for seven years at a rental of 5s. per acre per annum. A Crown grant could be obtained when machinery equal in value to £3 per acre was erected. New timber regulations were also issued. A clause was inserted enabling the Government, with the approval of the Legislature, to make concessions of land, in fee-simple, or otherwise, in any part of the colony, for constructing railways, establishing industries, or otherwise promoting settlement. ”

“ These buildings are as distinct a thing from the farm as the stock or the timber on it; and what is paid for them can no more be called rent of land, than a payment for cattle would be, if it were the custom that the landlord should stock the farm for the tenant. The buildings, like the cattle, are not land, but capital, regularly consumed and reproduced ”

“ Before giving publicity to our plans, however, we purchased one hundred and seventy-four acres contiguous to that which we already owned, and laid out the entire property in regular streets, and lined them with trees, reserving a beautiful grove of six or eight acres, which we inclosed, and converted into a public park. We then commenced selling alternate lots, at the same price which the land cost us by the acre. Our sales were always made on the condition that a suitable dwelling-house, store, or manufactory should be erected upon the land, within one year from the date of purchase ”

“ Their laborers and teams are always on hand for the working of moderate areas. In addition to the usual expense of the farm, they would not need to have a cash capital of beyond 20 to 25 dollars per acre for the area in truck."
"Other men, purchasing or renting land, especially for market gardening, taking only improved land of suitable aspect, soil, and situation, and counting in cost of building, appliances, and labor, would require a capital of $80 to $100 per acre. ”

“ In this connection, and of primary importance, is the avenue opened to all holders of small properties to share in the increase which goes to owners of land. It has been seen that owners of the soil constantly gain from the inevitable tendencies of industrial progress. ”

“ And as it is impossible to separate the improvement made by cultivation, from the earth itself, upon which that improvement is made, the idea of landed property arose from that inseparable connection; but it is nevertheless true, that it is the value of the improvement only, and not the earth itself, that is individual property. Every proprietor therefore of cultivated land, owes to the community a ground-rent; for I know no better term to express the idea by, for the land which he holds: and it is from this ground rent that the fund proposed in this plan is to issue. ”

“ We gave the greatest land-grant ever given to an individual or a corporation in the history of the world—sixty millions of acres; when I say to Mr Hill, of course I mean the Northern Pacific. We gave outright a strip of land 2000 miles long, 20 miles wide in the States and 40 miles wide in the Territories! Worse than that: instead of giving it in a solid body, we gave every even section, so that in timber lands it carried an immense advantage over anybody else coming in from the outside. ”

“ Here, as everywhere else throughout France, a great diversity may be seen in the matter of land tenure—peasant properties from five acres upwards, large holdings either let on lease, as in England, cultivated by their owners, or lastly, as in the present instance, managed by farm stewards. The system of métayage, or half-profits, is not in force.
On five acres, my informant told me, a man with thrift and intelligence may rear and maintain a family. The crops are very varied, corn, maize, oats, rye, buckwheat, hay, being the principal. ”

“ I consider the production of food the primary trust upon the land, that rapid transit over it is a secondary object; and as all experience shows that the division of land into small estates leads to a more perfect system of tillage, I think it would be of vast importance to the entire nation if all tenants who were, say, five years in possession were made "promoters" under the Land Clauses Act, and thus be enabled to purchase the fee of their holdings in the same manner as a body of railway proprietors. ”

“ Shore, presided; and we find, after many years of experiment, that, without reaping the smallest advantage themselves, the Company appear bound to perpetuate a resignation of their rights as proprietors of the soil, and of their interests as a body rationally entitled to derive an augmentation of rent, in proportion as the produce of the soil may become more valuable, and more abundant. ”

“ Fortunately for the owner, he possesses town property in addition to his landed estates, so that the question with him is not, as it is with many land owners, how to find the necessary capital to cultivate the land, but, having found the capital, how to expend it in farming, so as to produce a proper return. ”

“ Let them buy up land in large acreages and cut it up into small plots of from one to ten acres, charging enough advance to return interest on the money invested and to meet the necessary expenses in such operation. ”

“ To facilitate the access to land, the private land-dealing trade must be put upon a higher level. There must be Federal legislation regulating land dealers doing business in two or more states, state legislation for dealers doing business within one state only, and municipal legislation for the land dealers doing business within the city limits only. ”

“ There ought, however, to be no question whether reclamation work should be a public or a private enterprise. If a number, and even a large number, of the private land-development [Pg 125] companies have hitherto mined in the pockets of their land buyers instead of in the land itself, this has been largely because of the lack of any public regulation of private land-improvement companies. However, a number, perhaps a majority, of the companies have improved their land and have secured settlers who have made a success in the cultivation of the improved land. ”