256 TENANCY AND A CONNECTING LINK 



ease, with no greater aspiration left to him to achieve 

 than that of ranking among the county families. 

 Accustomed to an active commercial life, in which 

 bargains are quickly made, decisions rapidly formed, 

 and money turned over, it may be, many times in the 

 year, such a person may find himself out of touch and 

 not in sympathy with farmers whose very business 

 apart altogether from personal characteristics due to 

 habit and temperament requires them to act with 

 deliberation in their dealings with the processes of 

 Dame Nature, whom they may not unduly hustle. 

 When a farmer has to decide six or twelve months 

 in advance the plans on which the success or failure of 

 his efforts may depend, and then wait patiently to see 

 them mature, it is not surprising if he should adapt his 

 ways of thought to his environment. The retired 

 representative of active commercial or industrial pur- 

 suits may not understand these things and make 

 sufficient allowance for them. Finding the farmers, 

 from his point of view, ' hopelessly slow,' he loses 

 patience, regards with aversion any idea of having 

 to deal with a large number of them, and probably 

 ends by resolving to keep for his own enjoyment the 

 whole of the estate he has bought. So, while the 

 county families may come in for an abundance of his 

 smiles, these slow-going farmers can hope to get little 

 more than their frowns. 



Land-owners of this particular type and they are 

 steadily on the increase represent a great difficulty in 

 the way of any substantial extension of the small 

 holdings movement, especially where a connecting link 

 is wanting. The older class of land-owners those 

 whose families have been settled on the land for gene- 

 rations, have themselves engaged in farming, and 

 thoroughly understand farmers and their ways may 



