4 Large and Small Holdings 



work of their farm-servants. They had before them good hope of 

 rising by industry and thrift to the position of a small farmer properly 

 so called 1 . The disappearance of this class of landholding day- 

 labourers is a constant subject of complaint with the social reformers 

 of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries 2 . 



The next class of small cultivators was that of the small farmer 

 proper, which was still a numerous one in the eighteenth century. 

 The whole time of the small farmer and his family was given to the 

 cultivation of his own holding, and the sale of its produce was their 

 sole source of income. 



Very close to these little farmers stood the small proprietors, the 

 honest, industrious yeomanry whose disappearance is still lamented 

 by students of agricultural life 3 . Dr Rae has clearly shown that a 

 large number of them still existed in the middle of the eighteenth 

 century 4 . How they came to lose their land will be seen later. As 

 a rule this class too employed little outside labour, and very little 

 day-labour. They themselves did the work of the farm with the 

 assistance of their own families. Their holdings would seldom exceed 

 100 acres. Their yearly income in Cumberland, the classic country 

 of the small owner, ranged from 5 to $o s . 



All these three classes were alike in one point ; they all had some 

 rights of common. The smallest occupiers profited most by these. 

 They drove their stock on the common pasture 6 , and gathered wood 

 and furze on the common and waste 7 ; so that to them their common 

 rights were a very important privilege. 



Agricultural writers of the second half of the eighteenth century 

 give some data as to the commodities produced and sent to market 

 by these small cultivators. 



The holders of the smallest plots practically never sold corn. 

 They themselves consumed what amount they grew, which was 

 seldom sufficient even to cover their own demand for bread. Their 



1 Report of the Royal Commission on the Employment of Women and Children, 1868, 

 \ *5>- 



E.g. David Da vies, The Case of Labourers in Husbandry, 1795, p. 56; and The 

 Labourers' Friend, 1835, P- 3- 



1 G. F. Eyre, Small Farming, Oxford, 1902, p. 18. 

 4 Cp. Rae, loc. cit. pp. 546 ff. 



R. H. L. Palgrave, Diet, of Political Economy, 1899, p. 685 a; and G. C. Brodrick, 

 English Land and English Landlords, 1881, p. 20. 



W. Hashach, English Agricultural Labourer, 1908, pp. 89 ff. and isoff. ; and R. E. 

 Prothero, Pioneers and Progress of English Farming, 1888, passim. 



7 Report on the Employment of Women and Children, 1868, loc. cit. 



