252 PEASANT PROPRIETARY AT HOME 



rent as would represent interest on outlay. Here, then, 

 we meet with another consideration : that the peasant 

 proprietor must pay for all his own improvements a 

 prospect that may be far from pleasing should he still 

 be heavily mortgaged and in debt to the traders or 

 money-lenders. In the same way, of course, the 

 peasant proprietor must do all his own repairs, and meet 

 the fixed burdens on the land. 



Ownership, again, may prove a serious bar to advance- 

 ment. A cultivator who starts on a very small holding 

 may find in the course of a year or two that he can do 

 with a larger one. He repeats the same experience later 

 on, and, step by step, should he be a tenant only, he 

 moves from one place to another until he becomes a 

 farmer on a comparatively large scale. One instance 

 brought to my knowledge in Yorkshire was that of a 

 man who began as a labourer with a small allotment, 

 and, in successive stages, worked up to the tenancy of a 

 farm of 80 acres, settling his sons on other farms around 

 him. In cases such as this actual ownership would 

 mean that a man would advance a certain distance and 

 then stop. The trouble and cost of successive dealings 

 in land will be found more than the average small 

 proprietor cares to undertake, and he will rest contented, 

 and lag behind, while the tenant, with his greater free- 

 dom, is able to adapt himself readily to new conditions. 

 Instead of the small owner being master of his land, 

 the land is more likely to become master of the small 

 owner. 



And then there is that last problem of all for the 

 solution of the small owner : What is to become of his 

 few acres when he dies ? If he leaves them to his 

 widow and she sells, she will do so at a disadvantage. 

 If he divides the holding equally among his children, 

 and these, in turn, divide their share among their 



