244 PEASANT PROPRIETARY AT HOME 



know little or nothing, and in whose proper cultivation 

 of the land, and prompt payment of the rent, they can 

 feel no sense of security. 



In these scruples the estate agents are often 

 strengthened by the large farmers, who meet them 

 from time to time, are intimately acquainted with 

 them, and can influence the mind of the agent just 

 as the agent, in turn, can influence the mind of the 

 great land-owner. The large farmer, devoting, it may 

 be, his chief attention to the cultivation of cereals, is 

 the type of agriculturist from whom the loudest com- 

 plaints in regard to agricultural distress are heard, and 

 he is apt to look with no friendly eye on the small man 

 who is achieving a greater degree of comparative success 

 with some minor industry. His prejudices (I am here 

 taking the case of the average English farmer) become 

 still more acute when the small man happens to have 

 been a plodding, persevering labourer or foreman, whose 

 aspiration to be independent of service and become a 

 farmer himself he personally resents. So when the large 

 farmer meets the estate agent, and the subject of small 

 holdings is discussed, the large farmer expresses ideas 

 which the estate agent is already disposed to welcome, 

 being strengthened thereby in the emphatic protests he 

 makes to the land-owner, should the latter entertain any 

 idea of letting off part of the estate to small cultivators. 



Even the greatest of land-owners would require to 

 have considerable strength of mind to insist on the 

 carrying out of their sympathetic ideas in face of the 

 moral pressure thus brought to bear upon them by their 

 expert advisers. In the result, they too often think 

 it better to follow the line of least resistance, so 

 that when any farm becomes vacant it is not cut 

 up for allotments and small holdings, but added, 

 preferably, to that of someone who already has a big 



