ON AGRICULTURE TO DENMARK 143 



Small Holdings 



Combining the example of Denmark with their experience of 

 Scottish agriculture, the Commission are clearly of opinion that 

 without raising questions of land tenure too wide for this Report, 

 and without imputing failure to the large tenant farming system, 

 [I sound case is made out for creating a class of small holdings 

 in the hands of cultivating owners. By means of these a larger 

 number of country-bred people would be fixed upon the laud ; 

 careers would be offered to the active, intelligent, and thrifty order 

 of farm overseers and labourers ; the material wealth of the State 

 would be added to. It is>-believed that these advantages are 

 sufficiently great and well established to warrant the subject being 

 handled as an affair of national policy. The demand for labourers' 

 holdings of a few acres according to ability, and for small farms 

 corresponding to the peasant proprietorships of Denmark, and 

 ranging in size from 30 to 150 acres, already exists and would 

 rapidly increase. To bring such holdings into existence the credit 

 of the State could safely be used on principles with which the 

 Legislature is familiar, suitably adjusted to Scottish conditions. 

 Success appears to depend upon the devotion to this object of 

 areas of land of good average quality, lying conveniently to the 

 railway or other means of transport ; also upon the aggregation of 

 the small farmers within districts, so that co-operative working 

 may be resorted to in the event of the nature of their produce 

 and the requirements of profitable marketing being such as to 

 suggest the superiority of associated to individual effort. The 

 machinery by which Land Commissioners acting for the State 

 might effect a transference of land from a wilHng seller, and its 

 division among a number of qualified applicants, need not be 

 discussed here. But it may be remarked that the local govern- 

 ment institutions of Denmark broadly resemble those of Scotland, 

 and that these local bodies share with the functionaries of the 

 State the responsibility of investigating the character and 

 capacities ■ of would-be purchasers. As to the difficulty of pro- 

 viding farm buildings, it is believed that this would be greatly 

 minimised in practice. Utility, good order, and security are 

 obtained in the Danish steadings at much less cost than is thought 

 necessary according to the prevailing Scottish ideas. A good 

 deal might be trusted to the resourcefulness and prudence of the 

 Scottish small farmer when swayed by the talisman of property, 

 for it is a marked feature of the strongly similar type in Denmark 

 that he manages all departments of his work with a total 

 absence of half-heartedness. It may be added that the opinion 

 of the Commission as to the practicability of forming peasant 

 proprietorships with State assistance on favourable land is to some 

 extent justified by the operations of the Congested District Board 

 in the Highlands and Islands, this body having purchased whole 

 estates for the purpose of vesting them in crofters on a plan of 

 deferred payments. 



