This estate, which altogether cost about L20 per acre to buy, has been divided into sixty-seven holdings, varying in size from 4-1/2 acres to 7 acres.  The cottages which stand upon the holdings have been built in pairs, at a cost of about L380 per pair, which price includes drainage, a drinking well, and, I think, a soft-water cistern.  These are extremely good dwellings, and I was much struck with their substantial and practical character.  They comprise three bedrooms, a large living-room, a parlour, and a scullery, containing a sink and a bath.  Also there is a tool-house, a pigstye, and a movable fowl-house on wheels.

On each holding an orchard of fruit trees has been planted in readiness for the tenant, also strawberries, currants, gooseberries, and raspberries, which in all occupy about three-quarters of an acre.  The plan is that the rest of the holding should be cultivated intensively upon a system that is estimated to return L20 per acre.

The arrangement between the Army and its settlers is briefly as follows:  In every case the tenant begins without any capital, and is provided with seeds and manures to carry him through the first two years, also with a living allowance at the rate of 10_s_. a week for the man and his wife, and 1_s_. a week for each child, which allowance is to cease after he has marketed his first crops.

The tenancy terms are, that for two years the settler is a tenant at will, the agreement being terminable by either party at any time without compensation.  At the end of these two years, subject to the approval of the Director of the Settlement, the settler can take a 999 years’ lease of his holding, the Army for obvious reasons retaining the freehold.  After the first year of this lease, the rental payable for forty years is to be 5 per cent per annum upon the capital invested in the settlement of the man and his family upon the holding, which rent is to include the cost of the house, land, and improvements, and all moneys advanced to him during his period of probation.

It is estimated that this capital sum will average L520 per holding, so that the tenant’s annual rent for forty years will be L26, after which he will have nothing more to pay save a nominal rent, and the remainder of the lease will be the property of himself, or rather, of his descendants.  This property, I presume, will be saleable.

So, putting aside all legal technicalities and complications, it comes to this:  the tenant is started for two years after which he pays about L4 a year rent per acre for the next forty years, and thereby virtually purchases his holding.  The whole question, which time alone can answer, is whether a man can earn L4 per acre rent per annum, and, in addition, provide a living for himself and family out of a five-acre holding on medium land near Colchester.

The problem is one upon which I cannot venture to express any decisive opinion, even after many years of experience of such matters.  I trust, however, that the answer may prove to be in the affirmative, and I am quite sure that if any Organization is able to cause it to work out this way, that Organization is the Salvation Army, whose brilliant business capacity can, as I know, make a commercial success of the most unpromising materials.