204 Large and Small Holdings 



Here is one great difference between the question of large-scale or 

 small-scale production in agriculture and in industry. In the latter, 

 the smaller unit, the handicraft, is driven out by the larger factory 

 or machine production because as a rule the same goods can be 

 produced better and more cheaply on the large scale. The compe- 

 tition between the units is simply a competition in cheapness. Every 

 advance in technique, and every new machine brought into use, 

 strengthens the larger unit as against the smaller. In agriculture, 

 on the contrary, the large unit produces differently from the small. 

 Each unit has some branch of production in which it is superior to 

 the rest. The varying profitableness of these branches of production 

 is therefore decisive in the competition between the larger and 

 smaller units in agriculture. The progress of invention is only really 

 important in corn-growing, which does depend more or less on 

 mechanical processes, and therefore admits the use of wage-labour 

 and machinery. If corn -growing is profitable, the result is that, as 

 in industry, the larger unit of production flourishes, because there 

 technical progress can be put to the best advantage. But in every 

 other branch of agriculture technical progress has a much smaller 

 part to play. No mechanical processes, but personal, qualitative 

 labour is the essential condition of success in stock-farming or the 

 cultivation of fruit and vegetables. Where these branches of pro- 

 duction are profitable, the smaller unit of production will always 

 have the advantage. Whether or not they will be profitable is a 

 matter determined by the condition of the market, or in other words 

 by the standard of consumption. The course of our study will have 

 shown that the conditions of consumption and of the market in any 

 national economy can never be equally favourable to all branches 

 of agriculture at the same time. Rising corn-prices will favour the 

 extension of corn-growing, but will at the same time limit the con- 

 sumption of all other agricultural produce, and consequently entail 

 the decay or stagnation of stock-farming and market-gardening. On 

 the other hand, the consumption of all other articles of food will 

 increase in proportion as corn, the most necessary of them all, falls in 

 price. Accordingly the interests of large and small farming are not 

 identical in regard of the conditions of the market. What to the 

 corn-producing large farmer is an improving market will to the small 

 farmer be a deteriorating one. The competition between the large 

 and small unit in agriculture is a competition for the maintenance 

 and improvement of the market-conditions favourable to each. 



