34 THE "BACK TO THE LAND" MOVEMENT 



It is visible in their new-built houses and stables; in their little gardens; in 

 their hedges; in the courts before their doors, even in the crops for their poultry, 

 and the sties for the hogs. A peasant does not think of rendering his pig 

 comfortable if his own happiness hang by the thread of a nine years' lease. 

 We are now in Beam, within a few miles of the cradle of Henry IV. Do they 

 inherit these blessings from that good prince? The benignant genius of that 

 good monarch seems to reign still over the country; each peasant has the fowl 

 in the pot." 



Peasant Proprietors. John Stuart Mill, in discussing " peasant 

 proprietors" in 1848, after reviewing the evidence of many different 

 writers, sums up his own conclusions in these sane words: 



"The experience, therefore, of this celebrated agriculturist (Arthur 

 Young) and apostle of la grande culture, may be said to be, that the effect of 

 small properties, cultivated by peasant proprietors, is admirable, when they 

 are not too small; so small, namely, as not fully to occupy the time and atten- 

 tion of the family; for he often complains, with great apparent reason, of the 

 quantity of idle time which the peasantry had on their hands when the land 

 was in small portions, notwithstanding the ardor with which they toiled to 

 improve their little patrimony, in every way which their knowledge or ingen- 

 uity could suggest. He recommends accordingly, that a limit of subdivision 

 should be fixed by law; and this is by no means an indefensible proposition in 

 countries, if such there are, where the subdivision, having already gone farther 

 than the state of capital and the nature of the staple articles of cultivation 

 render advisable, still continues progressive. That each peasant should have 

 a patch of land, even in full property, if it is not sufficient to support him in 

 comfort, is a system with all the disadvantages, and scarcely any of the benefits 

 of small properties; since he must either live in indigence on the product of 

 his land or depend as habitually as if he had no landed possessions, on the 

 wages of hired labor; which, besides, if all the lands surrounding him are held 

 in a similar manner, he has little prospects of finding. The benefits of peasant 

 properties are conditioned on their not being too much subdivided; that is, 

 upon their not being required to maintain too many persons, in proportion to 

 the produce that can be raised from them by those persons." 



These words of Mill have an interesting confirmation in the 

 so-called Wilson- Wallace Report of 1914, a report made by two 

 qualified agricultural experts of Iowa. 2 



"We have also made a pretty thorough investigation," says this report, 

 "of the methods used by the British government to furnish land to the land- 

 less. There are four or five counties in Ireland where the land is inferior, the 

 rainfall very heavy, and the people very poor, living on very small farms, which 

 can at best afford them only the food needed to support their families, whose 

 male members spend the summers in England or Scotland, working for money 

 to provide the winter necessaries for the family. The congested district board 

 has bought up the lands in these counties, has divided them into economic 

 areas or holdings large enough to support a family, twenty acres being the 

 minimum, and is building houses on them. It is placing the congested popu- 

 lation on these areas, charging them three and one-half per cent interest on 

 the value of the land for sixty-eight and one-half years, at the end of which 

 time they own the land in fee simple. They work under very strict limitations, 

 however. They cannot sell or divide the land." 



2 Agricultural conditions in Great Britain and Ireland. By James Wilson 

 and Henry Wallace. Published by the Iowa Department of Agriculture, 

 Des Moines. 



