1 82 Large and Small Holdings 



at least compete with the large farmer, and in some cases obtains the 

 decisive superiority. 



Naturally there is as a rule a combination of various branches of 

 production on a small holding. That which is most natural and 

 economically best is also most usual, viz. a combination of such 

 branches as are individually most suited to the unit of holding in 

 question. Thus large growers of corn and fodder are also frequently 

 breeders of pedigree stock, or growers of potatoes on a large scale, 

 and may at the same time have extensive sheep-walks. As to the 

 combinations found among small holders, they will be best described 

 in the words of Mr Read's Devonshire correspondent : " The small 

 farmer, with his wife and children in most instances, not only milks 

 and feeds the cows, rears the calves, looks after the poultry and the 

 pigs, but the wife, often also attending to her dairy and butter-making, 

 takes all the produce she can spare from the dairy, poultry, all kinds 

 of vegetables, fruit, and even flowers to market herself; and by these 

 means generally provides the rent by the time it is due 1 ." These 

 words might well have been written of one of those small farms whose 

 disappearance was so bitterly lamented by the social reformers of the 

 eighteenth century. After decreasing in number for a century or 

 more these little farmsteads seem to be making their appearance 

 again. And whereas the large farm has altered to an extraordinary 

 extent within that period, so far as regards the technique of production, 

 the small holding, centred as it is in the personal labour of the 

 occupier and his family, hardly presents any difference of aspect. 

 Tools, machines, science and technique have all changed, and the 

 general appearance of the large farm, to whose domain they belong, has 

 changed with them. But that most important of all instruments of 

 production, the man himself, has been much less markedly altered 2 : 

 and therefore the unit of holding which is mainly dependent on the 

 man's own personal work has altered little or not at all in its general 

 characteristics. 



Most writers on English agriculture at the present day are clear 

 as to the economic significance of both the large and the small unit 

 of holding. At any rate, the old prejudiced critic who ascribed un- 

 conditional superiority to the large farm is now hardly to be found. 

 The prejudice is rather in favour of the small holding. But speaking 

 generally it is recognised that the small holding is in many ways 



1 Read, op. cit. p. 11. 



2 For the sociological aspect of the changes which the small occupier of today has under- 

 gone as compared with his predecessor of former days, see Appendix I below. 



