Economic Aspects 1 1 1 



very little from the crisis 1 . In Huntingdonshire "the small grass- 

 farmers, who depend on milk and not on corn-growing," were reported 

 to have been "able to hold their own considerably better than those 

 who have had anything to do with trying to grow corn*." Where the 

 small holders sold milk and vegetables and "owing to the nature of their 

 husbandry are not corn -growing," no signs of depression were to be 

 found 3 . A witness informed the Committee of 1906 that "In certain 

 districts of Cheshire and Flintshire there are small holdings which are 

 all permanent pasture, where the production is cheese-making ; these 

 are almost invariably doing well 4 ." 



The demand for small holdings, too, proved greater where they 

 included little plough-land'. As an expert put it : " I observe that a 

 small farmer who keeps clear of the plough generally does well ; but 

 whenever arable land is touched, his life appears to me to be one of 

 toil and penury 8 ." For instance, on the great Stratton estate the 

 most successful and most coveted small farms were those which were 

 on grass lands 7 . That well-known agricultural writer Mr T. E. Kebbel 

 said in the 1893 edition of his book on The Agricultural Labourer that 

 " no argument is wanted at this time of day to show that a man can 

 thrive on a small grass farm, who would starve on a small corn farm 8 ." 

 The same was true in an enhanced degree of allotment-holdings. 

 Their success, too, depended on their being devoted to live-stock and 

 pasture. When Lord Wenlock offered to form arable allotments on 

 his Yorkshire property, not a single application was made for them, 

 and it appeared that such holdings were intensely unpopular 9 . In 

 other districts there was so great a demand for grass allotments that 

 there were numerous competitors for every one available, and their 

 rents hardly fell at all even in the worst times 10 . 



It remains to compare the position of the small holdings with 

 that of the larger farms. Where the former grew little wheat 

 as compared with the latter, they proved to be much more 



1 Read, op. cit. p. 12. 



2 Report of 1894, qu. 41,206 ; and Bear, A Study etc., p. 36. 

 8 Report of 1881, qu. 62,307 ; and so qu. 47,904. 



* Small Holdings Report, 1906, Minutes, qu. 6739 ; cp. also Mr Bear's instructive article 

 Prospects for Small Holdings, in The Bath and West and Southern Counties Journal, 1908, 



P- 39- 



8 Report of 1894, qu. 3546 (Mr Ingram): "There is not nearly the same difficulty in 

 letting a farm, anything up to about 100 acres (as in letting the larger ones), assuming there 

 is not too much arable land in it." 



8 See Read, op. cit. p. 23. 7 Stirton, op. cit. p. 93. 



8 T. E. Kebbel, The Agricultural Labourer, ed. 1893, p. 160. 



9 Earl of Onslow, op. cit. p. 41. 10 Ibid., p. 47. 



