Change in Unit 91 



classification of holdings 1 . It is perhaps even harder to draw the 

 line between small and medium holdings and between medium and 

 large. The boundary in the first case would seem to lie as a rule at 

 somewhere between 100 and 150 acres. Here the farmer regularly 

 employs some hired labour, and therefore does some purely directive 

 work, although his main business may still be with the actual manual 

 labour, since the number of men he employs will be small. 



A few words must be added as to the peculiar distinction commonly 

 drawn in England between a " working farmer " and a " gentleman 

 farmer." It might be supposed that the gentleman farmer was 

 identical with the occupier of the fourth class, that is of the large 

 farm, such occupiers having no time for actual manual labour. This, 

 however, is not the case. The small farmer is as a matter of course 

 a working farmer : but the distinction as drawn has reference to two 

 different types of large farmer. On two neighbouring large farms of 

 similar area carrying on similar work, using the same methods and 

 employing the same number of men, one occupier may be a " gentle- 

 man farmer " and the other a " working farmer." The first rides, 

 hunts and pursues various kinds of sport, as do also his sons, while 

 his wife enters local society and his daughters learn music and 

 painting. The working farmer is to be found with his sons in the 

 field among his men, probably in his shirtsleeves, and his wife and 

 daughters help with the milking, in the dairy or with the poultry. 

 Pipes, cider and wooden chairs take the place of cigars, wine and 

 drawing-room furniture. The gentleman farmer is in fact a legacy 

 from the old days when agricultural prosperity was such as to allow 

 farmers to live at a very high standard of comfort, and under modern 

 conditions his day seems over. "When prices were high," writes 

 Mr Anderson Graham 2 , "the gentleman farmer could afford to indulge 

 in the comforts and luxuries to which he had been accustomed. 

 Nowadays the margin of profit is too fine to admit of these 

 extravagances." " There is no doubt about the fact that gentlemen 

 farmers are in greater tribulation than they ever were before. Unless 

 they are prepared to lose an annual sum for the privilege of living in 

 the country and following this agreeable occupation, they are entirely 

 out of place. When it is said that Northumberland is prosperous it 



1 A great deal of material for the solution of this question of the classification of 

 holdings according to size is to be found in the Report on Small Holdings, 1906, Minutes of 

 Evidence (Cd. 3278). Cp. Index, pp. 530 and 531-2, and especially the heading Self- 

 supporting Holding. 



2 Graham, The Revival etc., pp. 115, 113. 



