ts advantages can be obtained through
security of tenure. The small farm system should, therefore, form the
basis of our reconstruction, free play being left for a graded system
of farms where possible. In each county an agricultural committee
should have compulsory power to acquire land and let it out to
tenants, chiefly smallholders. It should have power to advance capital
to individuals on the collective guarantee of its tenants, and it
should be its duty to organise the collection of farm produce and its
disposal in the market."[728]

FOOTNOTES:

[713] Blatchford, _Britain for the British_, pp. 111, 112.

[714] _Socialism True and False_, p. 18.

[715] _Some Objections to Socialism Considered._

[716] _Ibid._

[717] Blatchford, _The Pope's Socialism_, p. 8.

[718] Hazell, _The Red Catechism_, p. 11.

[719] Blatchford, _The Pope's Socialism_, p. 9.

[720] Kautsky, _The Social Revolution_, p. 30.

[721] Bax, _Essays in Socialism_, p. 41.

[722] _Social-Democrat_, November 1907.

[723] Pedder, _The Secret of Rural Depopulation_, p. 18.

[724] _The Revival of Agriculture_, p. 17.

[725] Sidney Webb, _Socialism True and False_, p. 12.

[726] _What the Farm Labourer Wants_, p. 4.

[727] _Allotments and How to get Them_; _Parish Council Cottages and
How to get Them._

[728] _The Revival of Agriculture_, p. 22.

CHAPTER XIX

SOCIALIST VIEWS ON BRITISH RAILWAYS AND SHIPPING

Many Socialists complain, and they complain with good cause, about the
railways of Great Britain. All the British railways are in private
hands, and they are very inefficient. They are in many respects very
backward, badly equipped, and badly managed. They have wasted their
capital, watered their stock, and have paid dividends out of capital;
their freight charges are exorbitant; besides, they give habitually
and by various means, with which it would lead too far to deal in this
book, preferential treatment of a very substantial kind to the
foreigner.

Many Socialists have extracted from British Government publications
instances of such preferential treatment. One of the most widely read
Socialist writers, for example, gives among others the following
freight charges favouring the foreigner:

"Carriage of a ton of British meat, Liverpool to London, _2l._:
Carriage of a ton of foreign meat, Liverpool to London, _1l. 5s._:
Carriage of a ton of eggs Galway to London, _4l. 14s._: Carriage of a
ton of eggs Denmark to Lond