100 



ROTAL COMMISSION ON AGKICL'LTI UK. 



, 1919.] 



SIB UK-HARD WINFREY, M.P. 



8229. Mr. Ashby : You have been asked a good many 

 question* as to the accuracy of throe estimate*. I 

 should like you to give us your general opinion. 

 Looking at these figures for acreage and live stock 

 it would appear that tin- main business is the {in- 

 duction of cereals and potatoes excepting in the case 

 of one estate where you have some fruit, but the 

 rearing of live stock is very important, is it not? Is 

 it your experience that since the war where the small- 

 holder's business has been mainly concerned with 

 cereals they have been financially successful? I think 

 the smallholder whilst he gets a living profit on his 

 cereals the strength of his position is that ne keeps two 

 or three cows, and that he rears his calves and never 

 has any stock to buy. He breeds from his marcs and 

 his foals and never has any young horses to buy, and 

 he does the same with his breeding sows. So that he 

 is constantly having something to sell each year, and 

 has not to go to the market like big farmers have to 

 do when they want to buy anything. That is his 

 strength so far as cattle are concerned. Then, of 

 course, his wife looks after the poultry and they run 

 a much larger head of poultry, as you SIM', per acre 

 than the big man does. I think, therefore, the 

 strength of the smallholders' position is verv largely 

 in their stock. When you come to Wingland* I think 

 the strength of the men's position there is going to be 

 in their fruit. I might say that I interviewed about 

 39 ex-soldiers the other day living near this estate 

 who want land and houses to settle down on. Thev 

 only had allotments on the Wingland estate before 

 they joined up in the Army. As I say I interviewed 

 39 of them the other day it took me the whole day. 

 I examined each man. One man proved to me that 

 his brother and he had an acre of land between them 

 in partnership. They grew half an acre of straw- 

 berries on half of the land, and they made last year 

 out of their half acre of strawberries "130 gross which 

 they estimated returned them 80 net that is off 

 half an acre of land. They have let the young plants 

 spread, and there is such a demand for young plants 

 that they have sold 20 worth of young plants. So that 

 they have made 100 off half an acre of strawberries 

 I interviewed another young man, and he made off 

 half an acre of strawberries a net profit of 55. So 

 that I think is the strength of their position and 

 mark you that is land that was alJ being farmed be- 

 fore at 1 an acre for years; it was let by the Crown 

 to one man at 1 an acre and these mon have dis- 

 covered that they can grow fruit upon it, and 1 

 believe the strength of their position on that 1,000 

 acres is going to be fruit, but on the Lincolnshire and 

 Norfolk land there is no doubt the strength of the 

 smallholder's position is in his stock. Is that the sort 

 of answer you wanted? 



8230. It is not a quest-on of what answer I want; 

 it is a question of your opinion and of what one can 

 see from the figures you produce. It is your general 

 opinion that if a smallholder is to be BUCC< ssful In- 

 cannot depend upon cultivations unless it is oa a 

 purely market garden system, and that he must have 

 his live stock to consume his produce:' Quit,- to, ami 

 he must IM. able to turn round if the markets are 

 against him and consume a great deal of what ho 

 has grown -which is what they do do. 



8231. In not another element in the strength of his 

 position the fact that he is consuming a large amount 

 of the pr.,.|i,,-H of his holding ?_Ycs, I think that is 



) too. \\ hen prices are low and things are against 

 him ho can turn his produce into bacon or beof. or 

 whatever it may be. 



H232. Have you ever studied or ran you give us an> 

 ort of figure with reference to the labour income of 

 a man who in farming a smallholding such as these 

 aro, of say 20 acre*:- Hy labour income I mean the 

 wages for hi* own manual labour and possibly hi 

 wife*, and the net profit? That, of course, is the 

 difficulty with nil farmers; they will not give 

 vo.i their profit*: they will m,t let you M-e them, 

 th.-y are MI M-rretivo. The only way' in which you 

 can judge really if that they make money, ami 

 tor time they are able to retire; and as I know 

 they have not done any other work in the meantime 

 except cultivate the land I am bound to assume that 

 they have made their money out of the land, but 

 thpy will not tell you. 



8233. Do they make it out of the land or do they 

 make it partly out of their families?- Thin particular 

 man in Lincolnshire has a wife and one daughter .11 

 homo and they all work- throe of them. He has not 

 it largo family. 



I. AtAuming the daughter works, say, for ten 

 years and receives possibly only JKV ket money, has 

 she any right in the stock? I do not know how they 

 manage that. I have got one smallholder who has 

 retired and bought four houses at Peterborough. II 

 has gone to live in one of them and lets the other 

 three. He has passed over his land to his eldest son, 

 and his second son we have also taken in as a tenant 

 As a rule they behave well to their children. Of 

 course there are exceptions, but as a rule I find they 

 behave well, but I suppose they do not pay them much 

 when they ore at home. 



8235. When they reach an age of discretion, say 

 24 or thereabouts, do they still continue to work on 

 the holding or do their parents give them some respon- 

 sibility and some voice in the management? Some do 

 and some do not. 



8236. The majority do not, I take it? No, they 

 like to keep it in their own hands; that is rather a 

 weakness which I have tried to overcome and the 

 best of the young men sometimes kick over the 

 trace*!, as it were, and go off. I should like to keep 

 them on the place, but 1 find the fathers will hold the 

 reins. 



8237. From some remarks you made I think you 

 have studied Mr. Gooding's evidence of the Mtuutted 

 costs and the yield per acre, and although your own 

 acreage costs are much greater than his your costs 

 per quarter are less than his? Yes, I show a i 

 yield, but I decline to take the average of Norfolk 

 because I say these smallholdings are above the 

 average. 



8238. That is to say, they are using their land 

 and their labour far more economically? Yes. they 

 are, and if you take the average of Norfolk, as Mr. 

 Overman does, it includes a lot of very poor land 

 indeed a lot of land which is overridden with game 

 and which never will produce its proper quantity until 

 you alter the game laws. 



8239. I take it that the game do oat a considerable 

 proportion of the produce? YOB, I should think they 

 do. If Mr. Gooding in his evidence is taking tin- 

 whole of Norfolk into consideration I think that 

 you ought also to take into consideration the t'act 

 that there aro thousands of acres of land in Norfolk 

 which have been bought by people purely for game 

 preserving, and to bring that into the average is not 

 lair ut all. There are thousands of acres in my 

 constituency which used to grow four or five quarters 

 to the acre which are now practically derelict or 

 were so until the war. The War Agricultural Com- 

 mittee has made them do something, but there are 

 three largo estates to my knowledge in my consti- 

 tuency which have produced very little. 



82-10. You were asked some questions about the cost 

 of team and manual labour? That I have promised 

 to get.f 



8241. Yes, but I want to put this to you: in cases 

 where men have, not got horses of their own, would 

 such charges as these be the amount that they have 

 had to pay to their iicighlioiirs for plough n 

 that is exactly \\hat this man said to me. Mr said: 

 " When I go and do a day's work for any of my 

 neighbour! this is what I charge them." That is 

 what this Lincolnshire man told me. 



-JIJ. He is quite satisfied to get that sum when ho 

 is working for his neighbours? Yos, quite, and, 

 therefore, that is what ho charges for his own work. 



^LMM. Presumably he makcN a small profit when he 

 is working for his neighbours? Yes, I suppose then- 

 is a small profit in that case. 



8244. Some little doubt has been thrown upon 

 whether you have put a sufficiently high value upon 

 your farmyard manure for your potfttowf Is this in 

 Lincolnshire? 



>L'i:>. Yes. I am referring to paragraph (5) where 

 you have put 12 loads. Have you any idea what the 

 quantity would be in the cart; would it be 12 cwt. or 

 l"i ewt. or what? It is a good heaped-up cartload; 



t See Appendix No. IV. 



