164 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



and farmers have the advantage in small holding districts 

 of getting skilled workers to help them at those seasons 

 when they are in need of hands. 



Naturally, farmers, more than landowners, feared 

 the spirit of independence being created in a class 

 which had long been so patiently submissive : and some 

 landowners not certainly the most enlightened feared 

 the cutting up of estates where hunting or good shooting 

 were to be had. The effective but atrocious barbed wire 

 fence, so beloved by small holders, was an impediment or 

 a death-trap to those who followed the hounds ; and the 

 battue would be signally curtailed by the introduction of 

 small holders in game preserving districts. 



Farmers, though, had a genuine grievance in that they 

 feared that the " eyes of the farm " would be taken away 

 by the acquisition of some essential field, cut out from the 

 farm and injuring its economy. This is the strongest econ- 

 omic objection to small holdings, as worked under the 

 Act. County Councils, however, should have followed the 

 practice, which matured twelve years later, of acquiring 

 whole estates rather than individual fields for small hold- 

 ings, making it easy to carry out the provisions for co- 

 operation in Section 49. 



What really happened in a great many counties was, 

 instead of the eyes of a farm being cut out, small holders had 

 to be content with land at an inconvenient distance, and 

 very often the poorest land of the parish ; and the man 

 who simply imitated the methods of the ordinary farmer, 

 with less equipment and less facilities for marketing, and 

 paying in many instances a higher rent, did not present a 

 cheerful picture of agricultural prosperity. 



Nevertheless, it is extraordinary that, as reports showed 

 later on, the County Councils suffered so little in loss of 

 rents that in nearly every county it worked out at less than 

 i per cent. 1 



So slowly did the Act work, that an agitation arose to 

 increase the number of Commissioners specially appointed 



1 In eight counties the loss in rents is " nil." In only two counties 

 does the loss reach as much as i per cent. (Cd. 9203.) 



