4866. Before laying out that expense could you not have made an arrangement with the landlord that he should repay you for it if you were turned off?-So far as I am aware, he has never been prepared to give any rules or regulations to that effect.
4867. Has he not offered you a lease?-He has offered us a lease; but I don't think there is any party in Shetland who would accept of it.
4868. Have you ever applied for a different lease?-I have never applied for a lease at all. There was no use doing so, so far as I knew. But I think that when a party lays out money in improvements on master's estate he ought to be paid for it.
4869. But a man who lays out money upon another man's, land knows quite well before he begins that he will not be paid for it, and he takes the risk of the landlord being kind enough and able to repay him part of these expenses. It may very well be that the landlord is a poor enough man as well as the tenant, and that he cannot afford to put improvements upon his land; and yet the tenant goes and spends a lot of money on it, expecting the landlord to repay him for improvements which the landlord himself would not have made, if he had had the land in his own hands?-That may be quite true; but so far as I have understood, Mr. Bruce has always taken a great interest in having improvements made upon his land.
4870. That, however, is hardly a question into which I can enter here unless you think it has some bearing upon the system of payments at the shop, or the system of payments for the fish?-It has no bearing upon these questions at all, so far as I am aware, except perhaps in this way, that for four months in the winter season the fishermen are lying at home to a great extent, idle. The fishing commences about 1st May, and it finishes in the end of August. Then they have to gather in their summer crops; and during the winter season, and the early part of the spring, they have very little to do; while a person of an active turn of mind does not like to remain idle for such a length of time. They want to be doing something, and they will engage to any one who has work to give them.
4871. Have you anything more to say about that?-I have nothing more to say except this, that when person is a tenant at will, and liable to be removed after having made improvements on the estate of any proprietor, he ought to receive compensation for these improvements.
4872. Would it be possible for fishermen in Shetland to carry on the business of fishermen alone without being tenants?-Not so far as my judgment goes.
4873. Why?-Because the small earnings from the fishing could not support him, neither could the land itself support him in the way it is laid down present.
4874. And I suppose, if the holdings of land were larger, a man would have no time to attend to the fishing?-No, he would not. If the holdings were larger, of course the men would have to occupy the whole of their time with the ground.
4875. Don't you think that, with an improved system of agriculture, you would find enough occupation on [Page 121] holdings of the present size for the whole year?-Not in my opinion; they are too small for that.