172 Large and Small Holdings 



for this purpose. The qualitative intensity of labour which it affords 

 here rather serves to compensate for the advantages possessed by the 

 large farmer in other directions : so that the two types of holding are 

 practically on an equality. 



(2) Dairying. The great prerogative of the small holding, namely 

 the personal work of the occupier and his family, is nowhere of such 

 great importance as in that branch of stock-farming which plays a 

 leading part in modern English agriculture, namely dairying. The 

 small holder is at a great advantage in butter and cheese-making and 

 in the sale of milk and cream, and very largely as a result of his 

 superiority in the fundamental matter of milking. English agriculture 

 is, as has been said, suffering under a very serious exodus from the land. 

 The labourers who remain not only take advantage of their position to 

 demand higher wages than heretofore, but they make more demands 

 of all kinds ; they are more cultivated and more fastidious results 

 which from the point of view of civilisation in general are certainly 

 desirable. Women's labour has very much diminished, and in many 

 districts has ceased altogether 1 . The high wages earned by the men 

 enable them to keep their wives (and also their children up to a 

 certain age) at home, instead of sending them out as formerly to 

 wage-labour for an outside employer. Moreover, under modern 

 conditions the wives and daughters of agricultural labourers can often 

 find very paying employment on their own allotments. But this 

 impossibility of commanding women's labour is a serious difficulty 

 for the employer, and more especially for the dairy-farmer. The 

 larger farmers, whose families do not take part in the work of the 

 farm, have been obliged to give up women milkers altogether : but 

 they have not found that men are equally satisfactory in that capacity. 

 This is a complaint which may be heard whenever a large farmer is 

 encountered. The owner of a great steam dairy and of a large 

 dairy-farm in Devonshire 2 told the present writer that he gave his 

 labourers idf. a week, with a free cottage and garden, on condition 

 that they undertook to send their wives to do the milking daily. 

 But few farmers are in a position to make such a stipulation. Most 

 of them have to face the dislike of the women for wage-labour, and to 

 put up with men as milkers. But even men are difficult to get. The 

 younger labourers hate milking. They regard it as work to be despised. 



1 Wilson Fox, Agricultural Wages, pp. 297 ff. 



3 Mr Loram, the owner of the Cathedral Dairy at Exeter. 



