THE TWO PROBLEMS 117 



But we must remember that in any further under- 

 takings for spreading the system we have to deal 

 with it in the face of these laws, and take into 

 account this cost of creation. The study of small 

 holdings of natural occurrence, therefore, is only of 

 limited value to us if taken alone, and those we 

 shall study in the rest of this book are of a special 

 interest of quite a different nature as indicating 

 what possibilities there are in the direction of future 

 progress. 



It is important at the outset to emphasize the 

 fact that there are two quite separate ideas under- 

 lying attempts to bring about a greater settlement 

 on the land ; it is necessary to distinguish clearly 

 between them, for not only does the particular idea 

 effect the manner of carrying out any experiment, 

 but it has a great influence on the nature of the 

 results which are to be expected. These two ideas 

 are to induce settlement by supplying land to the 

 bona fide agriculturist already in the country, or to 

 do so by bringing out townsmen on to the land. 

 A certain confusion often arises in people's minds 

 as to the lessons which are to be learnt from the 

 various experiments, because they tend to apply 

 the results of experiments of the one nature to 

 would-be experiments of the other ; for instance, 

 when a colony of townsmen fail under certain 

 conditions, they take that as an argument for the 

 failure of the whole small-holding system under 

 similar conditions, and, conversely, what they see 

 being carried out successfully by trained local agri- 



