216 Appendix I 



(a) George Batchelor. This man had been a village shoemaker with a 

 rather small income. By energy and industry he saved enough to take a 

 little holding, which he cultivated with great satisfaction and apparently 

 with pecuniary success. He had in 1905 a banking account, and was adding 

 to his land year by year. New buildings were erected on his farm at a cost of 

 180, so that the holding was brought into very good condition. 



(b) George Williams. This man had a newly-formed holding, the house 

 and buildings having cost about ^340. He had been employed on the 

 railway, but gave up his situation. He had planted his land with fruit trees ; 

 and as he had a family growing up, his labour cost him very little. 



Another case, which was described to the Committee by the person in 

 question himself 1 , was that of a quondam cobbler, who got tired of his work, 

 and took an acre of orchard land. He ended by holding 30 acres, not as 

 tenant, but as owner. A Wiltshire co-operative association, the Mere and 

 District Small Holding Society, lets holdings of from one to 30 acres, chiefly 

 for pasture-farms or market-gardens. Among its tenants are men who were 

 formerly respectively a baker, an innkeeper, a decorator, a coach-maker, a 

 road- mender, a groom, etc., and several hawkers 2 . In another county, Den- 

 bighshire, a farm of 79 acres was cut up by the County Council. The largest 

 holding, which covered 44 acres, was taken jointly by two brothers, who had 

 formerly been miners in the neighbourhood. Their stock consisted of 14 cows, 

 19 pigs, two cart-horses and two ponies 3 . But one of the most remarkable 

 examples of change from industrial employment to the independent position 

 of small land-holders is offered by the history of Catshill in Worcestershire. 

 A large number of the inhabitants of this village were nail-makers, and nail- 

 making was apparently a "dying trade." Some of the ratepayers therefore 

 applied to the County Council for land. The Council bought an estate of 

 147 acres, and formed holdings of 3^ to eleven or twelve acres. The nail- 

 makers were thereupon transformed into market-gardeners. The fact that 

 they were near the great market of Birmingham was of great service to them. 

 They produced not only fruit and vegetables, but pigs and poultry, and 

 needed no other employment. According to a report laid before the 

 Committee of 1906 their position was most satisfactory 4 . 



All the settlers in the cases given above, although they did not come 

 from agricultural occupations, had either lived on the land (as villagers, on 

 the railway, in country house employment, etc.), or at any rate had not lost 

 all connection with it. From these must be distinguished the type of settler 

 who is a genuine town-dweller. A writer on the subject divides these into 

 two groups 5 , namely, first, town workers who have country wives, or who 



1 Small Holdings Report, 1906, Minutes, qu. 9012-9071. 



2 Report of a Conference etc., p. 104. * Ibid., p. 89. 

 4 Small Holdings Report, 1906, Minutes, qu. 3901 ff., 3909, 4003 ff. 

 6 H. E. Moore, Our Heritage in the Land, 1906, p. 112. 



