The total turn-over of the land ‘in hand’ amounts to the large sum of over L30,000 per annum, and the total capital invested is in the neighbourhood of L110,000.  Of this great sum about L78,000 is the cost of the land and the buildings; the brickworks and other industries account for L12,000, while the remaining L20,000 represents the value of the live and dead stock.  I believe that the mortgage remaining on the place, which the Army had not funds to pay for outright, is now less than L50,000, borrowed at about 4 per cent, and, needless to say, it is well secured.

Lieut.-Colonel Laurie informed me on the occasion of my last visit to Hadleigh, in July, 1910, that taken as a whole even now the farm does not pay its way.[6] This result is entirely owing to the character of the labour employed.  At first sight, as the men are paid but a trifling sum in cash, it would appear that this labour must be extremely cheap.  Investigation, however, gives the story another colour.

It costs the Army 10_s_. a week to keep a man at Hadleigh in food and lodgings, and in addition he receives a cash grant of from 6_d_ to 5_s_. a week.

Careful observation shows that the labour of three of these men, of whom 92 per cent, be it remembered, come to the Colony through their drinking habits, is about equal to that of one good agricultural hand who, in Norfolk, reckoning in his harvest and sundries, would earn—­let us say, 18s. a week.  Therefore, in practice where I, as a farmer, pay about 18s., or in the case of carters and milkmen nearly L1, the Army pays L2, circumstances under which it is indeed difficult to farm remuneratively in England.

The object of the Hadleigh Colony is to supply a place where broken men of bad habits, who chance in most cases to have had some connexion with or liking for the land, can be reformed, and ultimately sent out to situations, or as emigrants to Canada.  About 400 of such men pass through the Colony each year.  Of these men, Lieut.-Colonel Laurie estimates that 7-1/2 per cent prove absolute failures, although, he added that, ’it is very, very difficult to determine as to when a man should be labelled an absolute failure.  He may leave us an apparent failure, and still come all right in the end.’

The rest, namely 91 per cent or so, regain their place as decent and useful members of society, a wonderful result which is brought about by the pressure of discipline, tempered with kindness, and the influence of steady and healthful work.

Persons of every class drift to this Colony.  Thus, among the 230 Colonists who were training there when I visited it in July, 1910, were two chemists and a journalist, while a Church of England clergyman had just left it for Canada.