Many Socialists would like to resettle the country with colonies of town unemployed, but these proposals are opposed by some as impractical. "To imagine that any such colony could be self-supporting, that the land which no capitalist will now till with expert farm labourers at ten shillings a week would yield trade-union rates of wages to a mixed crowd of unemployed townsmen, that such a heterogeneous collection of waifs and strays, without a common acquaintanceship, a common faith, or a common tradition, could be safely trusted for a single day to manage the nation's land and capital; finally, to suppose that such a fortuitous agglomeration of undisciplined human atoms offers 'the most suitable and hopeful way of ushering in a Socialist State'--all this argues such a complete misconception of the actual facts of industrial and social life, such an entire misunderstanding of the process by which a democratic society passes from one stage of its development to another, that I feel warranted in quoting it as an extreme instance of Utopia-founding."[725]
Whilst the various Socialist schools propound different Utopian schemes for the resettlement of the land in the future, their immediate aim is of course not so much to benefit agriculture, as they profess, but to gain adherents among the rural labourers. With this object in view they are urged to agitate for, and are promised to be given by the Socialists, better wages, safe and healthy homes, more powers for the parish councils, which are to be used for the restoration of common lands, real free schools and better ones, cheap and good allotments, pensions for the old people, reform of taxation, &c. The rural labourers are urged to form trade unions, and they are told, "All these things you can get for yourself by your trade union and your vote if you and all the other labourers in the district will join the union and will agree to vote only for those who will promise to help to get them for you."[726]
In other pamphlets specially addressed to the rural labourers they are told how to get allotments, how to force the district councils to build good cottages for them, &c.[727]
Many Socialists propound the doctrine that the first and the principal object in re-creating the rural industries must be the bettering of the wages of rural labourers, and that the State should secure them better wages by arbitrarily reducing rents. The object, it need hardly be mentioned, is rather to destroy private capital in accordance with the Socialists' tenets than to benefit the labourers. The Fabian Society, for instance, claims, "It is necessary for the State to interfere, partly to secure the better utilisation of our national resources, partly to increase our agricultural population. The class most needing protection, the labourers, must be dealt with first in order to raise them to a decent level of comfort. A living wage must be secured to them, and, as a consequence, the farmers' rents must be fixed at a fair level. An agricultural court must be set up in each county to regulate wages and fix rents. Continental success in agriculture depends on co-operation, and that in turn is associated with the peasant-proprietor system. That system for sundry reasons cannot be adopted here, but its 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]