Page:The Irish land acts; a short sketch of their history and development.djvu/49

37 capacity to support a family at a reasonable standard of comfort without help from outside sources. The occupier of an economic holding has land which, in fertility, quantity and situation, enables him to live at a reasonable standard of comfort out of the produce and pay a rent. The other class lives on and partly out of the land, but land of a character, quantity or situation that will not support a family at a proper standard of living without extraneous help. In the case of the first class, the fairness of the rent is the most important consideration; in the case of the second, the land and rent are often minor elements in the struggle for existence. The land is either so limited in amount or of so unproductive a character that without outside help, such as the wages of labour, or contributions from friends and relations, the income of this class would sink below the amount necessary for subsistence, and actual starvation would ensue. It has often been pointed out that agricultural rent is or was in many cases in Ireland paid for farms out of which no true economic rent could be earned. This means, as every economist knows, that, were the ordinary and necessary cost of production, including the remuneration of labour, deducted from the return from the cultivation of the land, no surplus would remain for the payment of rent. Consequently, the rent paid for such land is not true agricultural rent. It is more of the nature of house rent paid by workingmen in towns, who, out of the wages that they earn in their various employments, spend certain portions in food, clothing, and shelter. But the Irish peasant, who tries to support his family on an insufficient farm, has not the advantage of having a demand for his labour at hand. He has either to emigrate, to migrate, or to live below the proper standard of decency and comfort. He is neither in the position of the farmer nor of the labourer. He is the occupier of a piece of land on which he builds his cabin, and pays a rent which is supposed to be agricultural, but which is really not earnable out of the land, but out of whatever other supplementary income he is able to obtain by migratory labour or by contributions from outside sources. The Irish Fair Rents Acts are supposed to deal only with agricultural holdings. The rents fixed under them are intended to be agricultural and economic rents. It is evident to anyone who has examined the circumstances of the small holdings of the West of Ireland that the rents assessed on them under the Land Acts in many cases are not agricultural rents, but are payments more of the nature of site rents, or the rents of non-agricultural holdings which were not supposed to be subject to the provisions of the Irish Fair Rent Acts at all. Had the Fair Rent Acts been more strictly administered, the greater number of the small holdings on the western seaboard and other parts of Ireland would have been excluded, and applications to fix agricultural rents on them would have been dismissed.