12 DECREASE IN HOLDINGS 



poses of enlarging his estate, or as a retired trades- 

 man, or as a building speculator. Since the fall in 

 the value of land the larger landowner has practi- 

 cally ceased to be a competitor, but there has arisen 

 an increasing demand for small plots of land in 

 many districts amongst town men and retired trades- 

 people for residential purposes, putting a value on 

 the land which is not economic from the small 

 cultivator's point of view. 



There have been, therefore, and still are, causes 

 at work which tend to the steady decrease of such 

 holdings as already exist. And this is not due to 

 the absence of desire for them amongst small culti- 

 vators, or to their failure in an economic sense. 

 While, on the one hand, this movement is going on 

 there are reasons which prevent any compensating 

 movement in the opposite direction taking place to 

 any appreciable degree. It might be argued that 

 if small holdings were economically sound, we would 

 expect them to arise in a natural manner, according 

 to the laws of supply and demand ; that is to say, 

 that if cultivation on a small scale was sufficiently 

 remunerative to the small holder himself, he could 

 offer a price for his holding, whether in the form of 

 purchase or rent, which would cause land to come 

 into the market in small lots, or would make the 

 provision of small occupations a profitable invest- 

 ment for landowners. 



It has been shown how conditions other than 

 agricultural, affecting the demand for land, work 

 against this in many districts. There must, how- 



