The Montgomery advertiser., 1909-10-04
Zach McGhee Writes Of
 Trade and Tariff in Eneland

scarcely make more than 50 bushels VT wheat renting for $40 a year.
 ihe price Is generally about e15 year Tor fairly good land in scotland. believe. In Ireland 1t is now from ss 10 tA50. This Is rent, you under stand. and excepting Ireland it goes on iorever. Tor the landlord will not sell.
 Ine government now practically iorces him to sell in Ireland. buying 1t I,set and selling on the installmenf plan. The annual installment the government charges Is from one-third to one-half less than the renter form erly had to pay.
 but what made 1t particularly op- pressive In Ireland and to some ex- tent yet for the government so far has taken over only half the land Is the custom here of q tenants selling his tease. The price for the lease of a Iarm has been about the value Of the farm. man wants to go to farming, say. He cannot buy farm. for the landlord will not sell. Tie Inds a desireable farm unoccu- pieu, put he comes up against the pro- position that another man who. how ever, does not want to work 1t, has a lease on 1t. To get 1t he has to pay the Jesse $2000. or the value of the iarm. and then when he gets It pay the landlord $500 year rent and the government $50 year taxes on the land.
 Now see, from the foregoing, by what easy steps the people of Ire iand nave reached the conclusion that .eht. a1ter all. Is taxes. and how the landlords the dukes, .ne earls, and the rest of the privileged class who have been holding the people up. have been slowly torturing to death the goose that laid the golden egg. It was the landlords of the United Kingdom who In the first half of the last century heid out so stubbornly against the re- peal or the protective tariff The rnahu1acturiers were willing to take orr the taiff duties which the masses or the people had come to look upon as tax on the necessities or life But the landlords were unwilling to give up their protection on wheat knowing they would have to reduce their ex- orhibant rents. They were finally defeated. the dreadful situation in Ireland forcing the country to free trade. But owing to the fast growing population and the consequent demand for land the landlords have been able to continue holding the people up.
 The people of the United Kingdom more particularly those in Ireland where they have been compelled to buy the land from a middleman and then pay rent all their lives to A rich duke. who often lives in England, have o~Ih 5o 8IOuhu uOWn tlI now they will stand 1t little longer, and to any impartial observer 1t inevitably appears that 1t is only a question of a snort time. as time moves over here say some fifty years or so, when in Great Britain. as well as Ireland. the ideas of Henry George. which he got from study of the Irish situation. Will be put into operation: that is that the government shall take up all the land. rent 1t out to tenants. with life leases. at so much a year. obolishing the landlords altogether. This, in ef- feet. Is already in force so far as half of Ireland is concerned. and the gov ernent is steadily steadily acquiring the rest
 At present there is no law compelI- ing the landlords to sell to the govern ment in favor of such a law. which now is pending in Parliament.
 Besides the land commission, which buys land and sells 1t, as descdibed above, there is an arbitration board which fixes rates of rent to be paid the landlords and specifics that after so many years the renter or lessee shall receive a title in fee simple to his farm.
 In addition to the selling to farmers, the government sells homes to day. laborers. just a house--a matched cot- tage of four rooms and haif-acre of land One must be a laborer, a work CT with his hands. but any such man can buy one of these homes for sixty cents a week. payable semi-annualiy. for a period of years. generally forty eight. If the man dies his heirs may have it when the forty eight years are out.
 Under the operation of this regula- tion. conditions among the peasant class are steadily improving in Ire- land. and the most enthusiastic ad- vocates of the scheme are hopeful that in time these dirty sums about Dublin will be cleared away.
 Already they are being cleared away in most of the English cities with great rapidity, the unicipal govern ment buying up all slum property, erecting good and sanitary buildings instead of the filthy novels. and rent ing them to tenants at less than they had paid before.
 This Is another of the ways the con- sumner Is 'proaected" in the United Kingdom.