XXIII THE SOCIAL QUAGMIRE 423 



own plot of ground is morally and physically healthy. He is 

 a freeman ; the sense he has of independence gives him his upright 

 carriage, his fearless brow, and his joyous laugh. '^ ^ 



Results of Large and Small Holdings. 



We see, then, that the statements continually made by 

 economical writers as to the advantages of large farms — 

 and repeated by press-writers as if they were de- 

 monstrated facts — are either partially or wholly untrue. 

 Large farms, as compared with smaller farms — one 

 thousand acres with two hundred acres, for instance — both 

 being capitalists — may be more profitable, but partly 

 because the larger farmer usually has more capital, and 

 employs more machinery. His individual profits may 

 also be much larger, even if he gets a smaller profit per 

 acre, on account of his larger acreage; and for this reason 

 landlords like large farmers because they can afford to 

 pay a higher rent. But this has nothing whatever to do 

 with the question as between peasant or cottage farmers 

 who do their own work, and capitalist farmers employing 

 wage labour. In every case known, and in all parts of the 

 world, the former raise a much larger produce from the 

 land, and it is this question of the amount of j^roduce that 

 is the important question for the community. 



It is often the case, perhaps even generally the case 

 with capitalist farmers, that a larger profit is obtained 

 from a small than from a large production. This is the 

 reason that, during the last twenty years, about two 

 million acres of English arable land have been converted 

 into pasture. But the average produce of arable land in 

 Great Britain has been estimated b}^ the best authorities 

 as worth about ten pounds, while the average produce of 

 pasture land does not exceed one pound ten shillings. 

 Here is an enormous difference, yet the profit to the 

 farmer is often larger per acre from the small than from 

 the large produce. This is because the cost of raising 



1 Fuller details of tlie results of permanent land tenure are given in 

 Mill's Political Economy, Book II., Chapter VI., and also in the present 

 writer's Land Nationalization, Chapter VI. 



