Leasing

“ IV. Commission Authority.-Appellants focus their principal attack on the lease provisions requiring a thirty-day period of carrier control and a measure of compensation other than revenue splitting. All agree that the rules thus abolish trip leasing. ”

“ Yet as already noted, a shoe manufacturer may psychologically or economically be more impeded by a leasing than by a selling system. And this general observation is buttressed by a study of features in the United leasing system which have a special deterrent effect. ”

“ In looking at United's leasing system from the viewpoint of potential and actual competition, it must be confessed at the outset, that any system of selling or leasing one company's machines will, of course, impede to some extent the distribution of another company's machines. If a shoe manufacturer has already acquired one company's machinery either by outright purchase, by conditional purchase, or on lease on any terms whatsoever, the existence of that machine in the factory is a possible impediment to the marketing of a competitive machine. ”

“ Now to the first of these causes, it is obvious that, in the case of the large and valuable holdings in the Lothians and other proved districts, the cost of making the lease, which, I may observe, is, from the nature of the Scotch title and the statutable leasing powers, much less than with us, could never prevent, and as a matter of fact never does prevent a capitalist farmer from having the security of a lease or of an agreement for a lease. But when we come to the small crofters, paying £1, £2, and £3 annual rent, then the cost of a lease comes to be a serious item. ”

“ Here the leases are either during pleasure, or for three, six, or nine years, which does not give the farmer time to repay himself for the expensive operation of well manuring, and therefore, he manures ill, or not at all. I suppose, that could the practice of leasing for three lives be introduced in the whole kingdom, it would, within the term of your life, increase agricultural productions fifty per cent. ”

“ They are then called 'rookeries.' Thus in every period of its course, in its preparation and its consequences, leasehold tenure is a noxious system, and the transmutation of the freehold is in every way an injury to the proprietor.
But building speculators are, like leasing freeholders, the victims and results, if they are also agents, of the leasehold system. These poor men are seldom destitute of merit; they are probably indifferent workmen, who, by force of character and exceptional capacity for supervision and control, have been advanced in their own sphere to some position of command. ”

“ In driving sheep to the leased lands within the boundaries of the reservation, they have been grazed for months on the reserved lands, the leasing of the private holdings being primarily an excuse to get the stock within the reservation. ”

“ The Secretary, on the other hand, contends: (1) the provisions of § 31 as a whole apply only to events, whether in violation of lease terms, the Act, or the regulations, occurring after a lease has been issued; (2) the Secretary's authority to cancel on the basis of pre-lease events is found not in § 31 but in his general powers of management over lands in the public domain; (3) that authority remained unaffected by the Mineral Leasing Act. ”

“ A lease covenanted to be void if the rent be not paid upon the day appointed, is good, unless the landlord make an entry.
1481. Rights of Married Women
Married Women, with the concurrence of their husbands, may grant leases by deed for any term. Husbands, seised in right of their wives, may grant leases for twenty-one years. If a wife is executrix, the husband and wife have the power of leasing, as in the ordinary case of husband and wife. A married woman living separate from her husband may by taking a lease bind her separate estate for payment of the rent and performance of the covenants. ”

“ Even if the Wherry Act be read as including § 6 of the Leasing Act, we should rebel at the application now given it. Section 6 of the Leasing Act, if applicable only subjects the 'lessee's interest' to local taxation. Yet the Court allows the local tax to be placed on the entire value of the property. Its justification apparently is the low annual rental charged by the United States to the lessee, the length of the lease, and the useful life of the buildings and improvements. The 'enjoyment of the entire worth' of the property will be the lessee's, says the Court. ”

“ For a recent account of the operation of the 1872 Act and the Leasing Act of 1920 see One Third of the Nation's Land, Report by the Public Land Law Review Commission 124 138.↑ The regulations provide:↑ The value to the Government of the Leasing Act is shown by the magnitude of the interests at stake. ”

“ This offer goes to you who now have a lease around one or both of these locations, and also to you who have at some time invested in a lease or leases around some well that the C. M. Joiner Interests have drilled. * * * we are submitting this proposition to you in language that will appeal only to business people who are interested in making an investment where they have a good chance for splendid returns on the investment.' 'There has nothing happened to either of these wells that would lessen the prospects for the opening of a new oil field. ”

“ To any one who has not got saddled with the vampire notion that ninety-nine years' leases are part of the original scheme of Creation, it is at once a monstrous absurdity and intolerable injustice that, when a man builds a house on another man's land, for the use of which he pays a yearly ground-rent representing at the date of the lease not merely the full annual value of the land on which the house is built, but double, sometimes treble [9] its annual value, the person to whom the ground-rent is paid should step in and take away the house from the children of the builder. ”

“ Our tenants are121 not afraid of the bastinado, but they are terrified at the rise of rent. This is the state of things amongst the tenant-farmers, farming without leases.12 In England leases are the exception, and not the rule. But even where you have leases in England—where you have leases or agreements—I doubt whether they are not in many cases worse tenures than where there is no lease at all; the clauses being of such an obsolete and preposterous character as to defy any man to carry on the business of farming under them profitably. ”

“ A bad tenant slips through a lease. For a good tenant it is, we maintain, an insufficient reward; if at the present usually prevailing rental (about £1 per acre) the bulk of future improvements, supposing that they are to be really improvements, devolves upon him. And we have lively recollections, which make us inimical to leases, of an aged relative of our own having been obliged a short time before her death to quit a house in which she had spent most of her life, because her lease had expired, and the house was sold over her head. ”

“ Clearly the property of the landlord; for in consideration of their being made, improved, kept up, and given up by the tenant at the end of the term, the landlord gave to the latter a lease of the premises for 31 years, at a proportionate rent.
We have taken some pains to prove this, not for the sake of being hard upon tenants in any way, but merely to show, that supposing past "improvements," which are not "improvements," will have in future to be destroyed, those who have made them agreeably to the conditions of such leases have no just claims respecting them. ”

“ My lease being well defined, I regard the service of such a notice as constituting a breach of contract, and must respectfully decline to pay any further rental for the premises I now occupy, until my position in regard to this property is determined.
"Yours truly, "DE MONTVILLIER."
"Outrageous!" blazed the knight.
"Monstrous!" echoed the faithful Rake.
"What a rotten piece of cheek!" said Hal.
Mr. Smith wagged a fat forefinger.
"The lore is," he said, "that the question of lease is between Sir Harry and the tenant. No tenant's got a right to take the lore into his own hands. ”

“ Newcome; and you will also find a covenant in the same lease, by which your interest in the property is to cease in a few days."
"Wa-a-l, now, I don't understand leases in that way. Surely it was never intended a man should erect mills, to lose all right in 'em at the end of five-and-twenty years."
"That will depend on the bargain made at the time. Some persons erect mills and houses that have no rights in them at all. They are paid for their work as they build." ”

“ What person in his senses would erect a substantial factory or a large concern of any kind upon a comparatively short lease? Men embark upon such enterprises in order that, as year follows year, their property may become more valuable, not that year by year it may become less so by the growing nearness of the time when it will pass to the landlord, who has never contributed a penny or a thought to the success of the concern, the building containing which, at the expiration of the lease, he can call his own. ”

“ Is it essential that a lease should be of less duration than the right which is subject to it? This is almost invariably the case; land is leased for a term of years or for life, but not in perpetuity; the owner of a thing owns it for ever, but the lessee of it possesses it for a time. We may be tempted, therefore, to regard this difference of duration as essential, and to define a lease as a right to the temporary exercise of a right vested in some one else. ”

“ While you have been wandering abroad, deserting us all, I have improved your estate. I have bought all the other mortgages, and of late the rent has paid the interest, within a few pounds. I now make you an offer. Give me a long lease of the two farms at three hundred pounds a year—they will soon be vacant—and two thousand pounds out of hand, and I will cancel all the mortgages, and give you a receipt for them, as paid in full. This will be like paying you several thousand pounds for a beneficial lease. The two thousand pounds I must insist on, in justice to my own family. ”

“ When land is taken by a farmer [Pg 93] under a lease for thirty years or more, it becomes almost like his own property, because, in the earlier part of his term, he can make great improvements with the aid of his capital, and yet be sure of getting the value back before the lease comes to an end. In the eastern parts of England and Scotland, where the farms are largest and best managed, these long leases are the usual mode of letting land. ”

“ The leases were alike in that they provided for terms of ninety-nine years each, with a right of perpetual renewals; with right of re-entry by the lessor for forty days' default in payment of the rent, or distress, at his option; two of them provided that for sixty days' default in the payment of the rent the lessor might re-enter and terminate the lease; each lease contained an option for a purchase in fee at a price of which the annual rent was equivalent to eight per cent; each required the lessee to erect a dwelling house upon the premises during the year of the making of the lease. ”

“ There are many other evils connected with the leasehold system, and one is the immense development it gives to the speculative builder and to the army of money-lenders and lawyers who are necessary to his existence. In the part of London where I live the ground-landlord gave building leases to a speculative builder, who, to raise capital for his operations, mortgaged each house before it was completed to a money-lending company, and subsequently gave second charges upon them to a Bank for further advances. ”

“ The owner grants a lease for a long period of time, usually ninety-nine years, for a ground rent, which is notoriously below the true economic rent of the land, subject to the condition that the leaseholder must erect upon the land and keep in good repair certain buildings, which on expiry of the lease will become the property of the ground owner. ”

“ If you desire to sell liquor you cannot go and rent a room and open your bar; you are compelled to buy the lease of a place which carries the license with it. Consequently a licensed place is a valuable piece of property. One at the corner of St. Martin’s street and Orange, a dingy building in a dingy neighborhood, was bought by an American to be used as an American bar, and he paid twenty-five thousand dollars bonus for the lease. The annual rental of the place is fifteen hundred dollars, and the lease for which he paid the bonus has forty-five years to run. ”

“ I may even add that I have seen a number of these leases, and my tenants may feel certain that I will never sign anything like them. It seems to me that the essential point of a lease is that it should be bilateral—that the two parties should be bound for the same time. Each runs some risk. If the years are good the landlord does not [Pg 93] benefit by the rise, but if they are bad he does not suffer from the fall. ”

“ Persons, for instance, holding property under very long leases may fairly be considered as owners; but then the question immediately arises, what length of lease is sufficient for this purpose. There could be no question, as was said in the House of Lords, as to lessees for 999 years; and indeed lessees for shorter terms than that might properly be considered as owners. A more difficult question arose as to lessees for 99 years, the common term of building leases, and also as to some other cases. ”

“ The Patroon had quarter sales on many of his farms—those that were let in the last century."
"Well, what of that? A bargain to allow of quarter sales is just as fair as any other bargain."
"It is fairer, in fact, than most bargains, when you come to analyze it, since there is a very good reason why it should accompany a perpetual lease. Is it to be supposed that a landlord has no interest in the character and habits of his [Pg 29] tenants? He has the closest interest in it possible, and no prudent man should let his lands without holding some sort of control over the assignment of leases. ”