TRIALS OF THE SMALL FREE-HOLDER 249 



individual unit seeds, manures, etc., of so defective a 

 quality that he would have little or no chance of getting 

 a satisfactory return from them. 



Bad, therefore, as the prospect is for the small free- 

 holder when he has (i) sunk his available capital in 

 ownership, (2) satisfied the demands of get-rich-quick 

 lawyers, and (3) strapped on his back the burden of a 

 mortgage he can hardly hope to redeem, his position 

 becomes still worse if he tries to make his way with no 

 co-operative society through which he can buy neces- 

 saries of guaranteed quality at the lowest rates, or con- 

 sign and sell his produce to the best advantage. He 

 struggles on, hoping that times will mend, and doing 

 his best to meet inflexible mortgage charges which, in 

 bad seasons, become the worst form of 'rent.' His 

 struggles become even more severe when, still as an 

 individual unit, he competes on the market with foreign 

 produce grown in countries where land values and 

 cost of production are lower, and the actual producers 

 represent a highly-organized community. In the end 

 he joins in the despairing cry that ' British agriculture 

 does not pay '; he reviles the railway companies ; he 

 calls on the Legislature to make him prosperous ; and 

 he probably finishes off by disposing of his holding for 

 what he can get in which case there will be a fresh lot 

 of fees for the lawyers, and the whole business will 

 recommence de novo. 



If the small holder were in a position to purchase 

 right out, free of any mortgage at the start, there would 

 still be the temptation to raise money on mortgage 

 later on whenever it was wanted, and to such tempta- 

 tion the majority of peasant proprietors who are abso- 

 lute owners, either in England or elsewhere, generally 

 succumb. This has especially been the case with the 

 ' statesmen ' of Westmoreland and Cumberland, whose 



