This is an article that appeared in Popular Science in August of 1886 and discusses the problems with land ownership on PEI.

Rhetoric, in so far as it prophesied a wonderful impetus to the island when leaseholds gave place to freeholds, has somewhat missed fulfillment. Unthrifty farmers were not born again to thriftiness by the act of 1875. The money-lender has taken the place of the of the landlord with a good many of them. His terms are not so easy, nor his methods so gentle, and already about a fourth of the farms of the island are mortgaged at rates of interest averaging about seven and a half per cent. A single solicitor in Charlottetown has stowed in vault mortgages to the amount of a half million dollars, held chiefly by widows and orphans, whose claims, unlike those of the wealthy proprietors, are exigent and must be promptly met.

The lesson from history of land proprietorship in Prince Edward Island is applicable to a wider field that the little Canadian province. It marks unwisdom of governments in granting large tracts to corporations or individuals on nominal terms. With the lapse of years, if holdings are retained by their original grantees, the rise in the value is enormous, and a community which has chiefly created that value resents the levy of “unearned increment.” The agitation in Prince Edward Island also illustrates how the wide franchises of democracy modify the violence of combats concerning questioned of property. Even though the mistakes of the Old World be sometimes repeated in the New, though unwarrantable privileges be created or acquired, the people possess a power in the ballot-box which renders unnecessary those appeals to the cartridge-box which so often accompany transatlantic agitation. Perhaps, when English Hodge awakens to his new influence as a voter, laws partly of his making may take the color of his interests, and English landed property may be further shorn of privilege. Beyond that may also be exerted the sinister influence against contract to which law-makers with little property, or none, are ever strongly tempted.

This is an article that appeared in Popular Science in August of 1886 and discusses the problems with land ownership on PE

Up to December 31, 1885, the Government of Prince Edward Island had bought from proprietors 843,981 acres of land, and had sold 679,832 acres at an average price of $1.59 per acre. The usual Government terms of sales were one fifth cash, and the remainder payable in ten equal annual instalments, with interest at six per cent. On December 31, 1882, the last date up to which statements regarding arrears were published, it was shown that by purchasers who had made no payments whatever during the  terms varying from three to fifteen years, $200,648 was due in arrears to the Government. A pretty general feeling seemed to prevail among them that new concessions would be granted delinquents, who as a class were numerous enough to make the authorities charged with collection very lenient indeed–to put it mildly.

In quieting disturbances and placing real estate in the ands of it occupiers and users, the Land Transfer Act did unquestionable good. In the passage and administration of the act a favoring of the tenants and ex-tenants is most manifest. Before sales to tenants began there was a classification of lands according to value, and tenants usually bought at prices somewhat below cost, and occasionally at prices much below cost. Tenants in buying properties which they had cultivated were freed from all arrears of rent due to the date of acquisition by Government. Improvements of all kinds which they had effected on their lands had been, and continued to be, their property; as such these improvements, houses, barns, fences, and what not, had entered into no calculations of the Government’s when buying and selling.

Since the act went into operation a good many tenant-purchasers have sold out their holdings, and, considering the value of their improvements, usually at a marked advance on the purchase price, bearing out to some extent the complaints of the original proprietors that too little had been paid them. It is difficult to arrive at the truth of this much-disputed matter; a fair approximation alone is possible. Wilderness lands bought some years ago from the Government, and still unimproved, sell at considerable premium. Cultivated farms do not as a rule realize so handsome an advance, and in their prices is to be considered the vary variable element of value– tenant’s improvements. It is generally thought in the island that something more than the mere sentiment of ownership as distinguished from tenancy was sought to be gratified by the land agitation. For twenty ears before 1875 a suffrage practically universal was enjoyed by the island. A voting majority had it in their power to modify the tenure of property in their own interest, and they exercised it through their parliamentary representatives. Today the effect of a habit of mind acquired in the years during which concession after concession was made to tenants is still plain. Arrears due the Government go on accumulating, it would seem, with expectations that in the future they will be wiped off the slate. The tenants when they became purchasers had decidedly good bargains; they would certainly not have agitated as they did merely to exchange rent for an equal financial burden of interest, yet, yet as events have proved, their bargains, though good, have been less profitable than was anticipated. Since 1875 the vast areas in the far West and the Northwest brought under cultivation have greatly reduced the prices of farm produce, and have at the same time powerfully attracted the emigrating classes of the Atlantic seaboard.

This is an article that appeared in Popular Science in August of 1886 and discusses the problems with land ownership on PEI.

A very significant element in the pleas made against the landlords, was the labors of the tenants alone had imparted increasing values to the land in making fertile farms where there had been but wilderness. It was urged again and again that the toilers who had imparted value property were entitled to proprietary rights, as against the holders of titles whose exertions had been confined to the collection of rent. Therefore, it was maintained, the Government should not, in buying lands, do so on the basis of  capitalizing a rent which had, as a value, been chiefly created by the industry of the tenants. A good many occupiers of land on short or uncertain leases plainly manifested the universal tendency of such tenure– bad farming and a feeble interest in improvement of any kind. Some of tem were accustomed to reducing their indebtedness by sums ranging from five dollars down to five shillings. In every case the landlord’s claim received such attention as it was convenient for the tenant to give it after the accounts of merchants, blacksmiths, wagon-builder, or other creditor had been paid. This, too, when even for good land, rent was rarely more than about ninepence sterling an acre. Incidentally, it was shown that the long coast-line of the island had had its effect in inducing many farmers to embark in fishing, and allegiance divided between land and sea gave agriculture but primitive development. Another fact of interest elicited was that the island had a most admirable fertilizer in the beds of mussel mud and shells bordering its shores, which, applied to the land, increased its yield from two to even ten fold for several years.

When the Land Commissioners had concluded their labors in court the experiment of tenant proprietorship began. It proved an experiment attended with many difficulties. The surveys of the land had been very incomplete and imperfect, so that disputes as to boundaries were constant. The Government now finds that it has paid for 41,000 more acres than they received. From doubtfulness in surveys and boundaries it was no uncommon for three or four people persons each to claim the right to but the freehold of the same property. The purchase of the land by Government having banished all fears of arrears of rent being exacted from former tenants. A general resurrection by former owners of old leases, agreements, and minutes developed an army of claimants for the right to buy. In addition to these elements of contention, the Government had to deal with hundreds of squatters, who by virtue of twenty years’ occupation had acquired proprietary rights. During the years which have elapsed since the act went into force, its difficulties have been gradually overcome, chiefly through the judgement and ability of the commissioners who have administered it. Let some statistics of their labors be presented:

This is an article that appeared in Popular Science in August of 1886 and discusses the problems with land ownership on PEI.

With Right Hon. Hugh E. Childers as chairman, the commission went to work, and the voluminous evidence presented to it reveals how thoroughly the tenants regarded their leases as unsound and illegal. Whenever a lese was taken as a basis of valuation, the pleas was set up that the proprietor’s title was faulty, and that he had leased property to which his right was doubtful. In vain was it contended that the whimsical conditions of the original grant had been impossible of fulfillment. The retort was repeated that, therefore, proprietorship should be forfeited, and it was held that landlord influences at Westminster had, in early days of agitation, successfully fought off proposed concessions to tenants, which, if granted, would have spared the island grievous evils. The landlords maintained in their defence that the ownership had been repeatedly recognized by the Government, more particularly in the Fifteen Years’ Purchase Act of 1865. They pleaded that, if they had not rigorously enforced claims against their tenants, their forbearance arose from no uncertainty as to their titles, but from humanity in cases where their tenants were needy, and from social and political prejudices against legal collection where their debtors where thriving. Leases, it was clear, were very far from being leases in the British, Irish, or American sense; they were not contracts meaning what they said, but doubtful bargains open to discussions or rebate, just as landlords’ title could be discredited, indulgence obtained, or prosecution parried. Many tenants of rich land, abundantly able to pay their rent, had paid none. Often a tenant who decried his leasehold as poor and unproductive, was proved to have disposed of it for a handsome sum. Parallel with the accumulating of arrears on landlords’ ledgers had gone on the steady piling up by tenants as a class of savings in the banks. A disregard for property in rents extended itself to other kinds of property belonging to landed proprietors. It was not uncommon for woodlands to lose their vale through being stripped of timber by thieves. When in an extreme case a tenant was ejected from his holdings, no successor to him was to be found. Once a sheriff bearing a writ was met by an armed mob, headed by a member of the Legislature.