Social and Political Aspects 123 



Their dislike is really traceable to social considerations, which for 

 purposes of discussion are decently cloaked in economic garments. 

 As a matter of fact the large farmer has an antipathy to the small 

 man who claims or hopes to claim a position of independence. It is 

 largely due to this social prejudice that, as Mr Channing's Minority 

 Report put it : " The majority of the large farmers do not yet seem 

 to realise what the systematic development of allotments and small 

 holdings can do for agriculture in maintaining on the spot a perma- 

 nent supply of efficient and skilled labour 1 ." The prejudices of the 

 large farmers and land-agents also mutually strengthen each other. 



Mr G. C. Brodrick drew from such considerations as these the 

 conclusion that small holdings cannot make much progress unless 

 the great landed estates are broken up. Where the estate is com- 

 paratively small and the owner is his own agent the evils resulting 

 from the free hand given to the agent on the large estates are not, he 

 says, present; and on such estates the tendency to divide the holdings 

 is stronger 2 . No doubt the abolition of primogeniture and of entails 

 would be favourable both to the breaking up of large estates and to 

 the development of small holdings. But the division of the large 

 farms is making good progress in England in spite of the present 

 conditions of land-owning. The social and political counteracting 

 tendencies just described do indeed hinder, but do not prevent, the 

 economically profitable development. This, however, is a fact which 

 deserves some attention. 



For the first time in English agrarian history, the system of 

 capitalistic concentration, as applied to the land, is showing serious 

 weakness. So far, it has developed hand in hand with the economic 

 needs of agriculture. Large estates and large farms went excellently 

 together. At the present time the interest of the landowner, 

 economically speaking, would be in the formation of small farms. 

 But his interests are only partly economic. They are also social 

 and political, and to these latter the small farm system does not 

 correspond. The social and political interests, moreover, are often as 

 strong as, or even stronger than, the desire to obtain the highest 

 possible money return. Here lies the danger for the future de- 

 velopment of English agriculture, and the defect of the hitherto 

 economically satisfactory system of capitalist agriculture. If land- 

 owners prize the non-economic aspects of their estates so highly as to 



1 Final Report, 1897, p. 355. 



2 Brodrick, op. cit. pp. 393 f. " The owner of many thousand acres... is almost sure to be 

 more or less in the hands of his agent," etc. 



