192 Large and Small Holdings 



The table given above 1 shows that in the western counties, and 

 in the so-called mixed and purely pasture counties, the size of 

 holdings is much more uniform than in the corn-districts of the east. 

 In District I, of every 100 acres 58*55 were in holdings of I 300 

 acres. In District IV, no less than 82*83 in every 100 acres were so 

 held. In other words, the small and medium holdings were more 

 numerous per area, as compared with the large holdings, in the 

 western than in the eastern counties. Such holdings, of I 300 acres, 

 have a common interest in the co-operative purchase of seed, manures, 

 foodstuffs, dead stock of all kinds, and so forth. For even the 

 medium -sized holdings find themselves at a disadvantage in these 

 matters as compared with large holdings. They are therefore 

 willing to combine with the small and very small holders ; and 

 naturally this can be most easily effected where small and medium 

 holdings are most numerous. Further, to all appearance the uni- 

 formity in the size of holdings is particularly great in certain districts 

 in the west of England. As contrasted with the eastern counties, 

 there are districts in which whole colonies of small and medium 

 holdings lie together, sometimes of quite recent origin. Thus 

 Worcester, Warwickshire and Devonshire have their market-gardening 

 districts, and Cumberland, Westmorland, Cheshire, Gloucester and 

 Somerset their dairy-districts. Then again there are neighbourhoods 

 devoted to great sheep-walks, and therefore exclusively held in large 

 holdings. These three circumstances, taken together, suffice to 

 explain why co-operation, and especially association for co-operative 

 purchase, has developed first and chiefly in the western part of the 

 country. They are, to recapitulate them briefly, first, that small and 

 medium-sized holdings have a common interest in the purchase of 

 certain goods ; secondly, that the greatest number of such holdings is 

 to be found in the west and wherever stock-farming and market- 

 gardening flourish ; and thirdly, that in the west such holdings lie less 

 intermixed with the large holdings than they do in the east. 



Where such associations have been successfully founded, the 

 small holders have certainly overcome to a considerable extent one 

 great disadvantage of their type of holding as compared with the 

 large farm ; namely that of the higher price they must without such 

 co-operation pay to middlemen and contractors for worse goods. 



But besides the disadvantage at which the isolated small holder 

 stands in regard of the purchase of the necessary means of production, 

 he is also, it will be remembered, at a disadvantage in the process of 



1 See p. 104. 



