Mutual Help

Feilding Star, Volume XIV, Issue 79, 22 December 1892, Page 4

Mutual Help

Mr John Braye, of 44 Brompton square, writes to the London Tines : — " In Carolina, since the war of secession destroyc the capitalist planter and caused the large plantations to be cut ud into small holdings, a system has sprung up of working j farms of iroua 50 to 100 acres on i sharing terms. The owner of the ] land and homestead arranges with an industrious working agriculturist to i work the land for a year, finding his own horse or mules, ploughs, waggons, labor. The owner ol ihe land provides half the seed, and, when fertilisers are used, half of that. In the case of cotton crops sometimes the landlord finds all the fertiliser. At the end ot the season the working farmer and the owner share the crops in equal portions, and if the partnership has been mutually satisfactory it is continued tor another year ; itn;t it is terminated, and neither side finds any difficulty in forming other partnerships. In till cases which have come under my notice the system worked well. It sometimes happens that a working man with a goud record, and without a penny oi capital, has credit given him by the laudlord to draw from the stores in his district food and necessaries to carry him through the first year. If he is ble*sea witti a large family of sons and daughters he requires to hire very little assistance to work a hundred acre holding. He has a social status which he would not have as a paid laborer, and this is some benefit to the white community in a country where the black man outnumbers the white in some districts by six to one, and is not quite so civilised in all cases as his friends at Exeter Hall picrurs him. 1 would recommend to some of the more liberal-minded landowners, who have trouble with their capitalist farmers, to give the system a trial. These farmers do not whine after Protection, but are all Freetraders."