164 Large and Small Holdings 



produce scarcely any fruit or vegetables for the market. On the 

 other hand there are holdings, and whole districts of such holdings, 

 entirely devoted either to fruit or vegetables or to both together ; 

 and in these districts some large holdings will be found. The present 

 writer saw a market-garden of 600 acres in Lincolnshire, almost 

 entirely under vegetable crops. A hundred acres were devoted to 

 celery 1 . Mr Bear mentions two brothers in Kent who hold 1000 acres 

 almost exclusively devoted to strawberries and currants 2 . But market- 

 gardens on such a scale are exceptional. They often have extensive 

 forcing houses, the use of which has very much increased of late years 

 in England. Such houses naturally require a considerable expenditure 

 of capital, and are therefore out of the reach of the small man. But 

 this is not the chief reason for the existence of these very large fruit 

 or vegetable farms alongside of the smaller gardens. Mr Bear, who 

 has given much attention to the development of hot-house culture, 

 considers that its importance in the competition between large and 

 small holdings is less than that of the advantage in marketing 

 possessed by the large holder 3 . Two methods of sale must be dis- 

 tinguished. The gardener may himself sell his produce in his own 

 neighbourhood ; or he may sell it through a middleman in some 

 market either near or distant, either selling outright to the trader 

 or giving him some sort of commission on the sale. The latter 

 method is generally in use when the goods are sent by rail to a 

 market at some distance : and in this case the small holder is at a 

 great disadvantage as compared with his larger competitor. In the 

 first place the railway tariff 4 is almost always so arranged that the 

 relative cost of transport diminishes with the amount to be carried. 

 Consequently the man who can send the greatest quantity has pro- 

 portionately least to pay. In the second place, the large grower, 

 selling wholesale, can as a rule make much better bargains with the 

 trader than the small holder can 5 . In the large grower the middle- 

 man meets a man accustomed to business transactions ; in the small 



1 Mr Blaides' holding, Epworth, Lincolnshire. 



1 W E. Bear, in Journal R. A. S., Vol. IX, Part I (1899), pp. 14 f. 



* Ibid., Vol. x, Part n (1900), p. 44. 



* See the figures given by Sir Francis Channing, op. cit. pp. 268 ff. They show that the 

 so-called "reduced tariffs" always begin at z. certain minimum quantity only, and that this 

 minimum is often set very high. Consequently those who have less to send than this 

 minimum are at a great disadvantage. Cp. also Bear, A Study etc., p. 20. 



5 Eyre, op. cit. p. 6 : " I have heard very various reports as to the prices obtained, 

 which, on the whole, go to prove that the man who deals in small quantities always gets less 

 than the man who can send large supplies." 



