State 'Yelp for Agriculture. By Charles W. Tomkinson. (T. Fisher
Unwise. 3s. 6d, net.)—Mr. Tomkinson, who writes as a landowner with a practical knowledge of farming, regards import duties and bounties as dubious and uncertain methods of helping the agricul- turist. His proposal is that the State should advance £50,000,000 at a low rate of interest to landowners and farmers to make per- manent improvements on the land, and should spend £40,000,000 in building one hundred and eighty thousand labourers' cottages at an average cost of £225 and a rent varying from £6 to £7 10s. The net cost to the State would, he estimates, be £2,400,000 a year for fifty or sixty years. Landowners who failed to improve their land should he expropriated ; farmers who did not cultivate their land efficiently should be turned out. Mr. Tomkinson, it will be seen, faces the problem courageously, in no party spirit, and his book is well worth reading.
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