MANAGEMENT 253 



the neighborhood of Paris, where some remarkable results have 

 been achieved on very small areas. More remarkable still, how- 

 ever, are some of the things which have been written about 

 them upon a very small basis of fact. Though they are im- 

 portant as considered by themselves, yet as compared with 

 the great agricultural interests of rural France, these city and 

 suburban gardens are of microscopic importance. 



We come now to the question of small-scale farming as a 

 distinctly rural problem and not as a solution of urban problems. 

 This concerns that class of farmers who are farmers and nothing 

 else, and who make their living from very small farms devoted 

 to the production of the great staple crops. A great deal has 

 been written by the admirers of this system of farming, but most 

 of their arguments apply to medium-scale farming better than 

 to small-scale farming. Small-scale farming, as we have defined 

 it, invariably means small incomes for the farmers, though the 

 land is usually well cultivated and yields large crops per acre. 

 There is no reason to expect, however, that small farms will 

 yield more per acre than medium-sized farms, and, as a matter 

 of fact, they do not. A farm large enough to enable the farmer 

 to use adequate team force, with efficient tools and machinery, 

 will usually be quite as well cultivated as a farm so small as to 

 make heavy teams and efficient tools and machinery an unprofit- 

 able investment. As suggested in a previous chapter, the French 

 or the Belgian peasant frequently finds it more profitable to dis- 

 pense altogether with horses, or even oxen, as draft animals, 

 using rather a pair of milch cows, or only a single cow, for such 

 work as he cannot do with his own muscles. This is not due to 

 his ignorance, but to the simple fact that his farm is too small 

 to employ more efficient but more expensive draft animals ad- 

 vantageously. It will take the produce of from three to five acres 

 of hay and grain to feed one horse throughout the year. The 

 fanner with only a ten- or fifteen-acre farm would have very 



