CHAPTER XXII 

 SMALL HOLDINGS SYNDICATES 



No more enthusiastic and, at the same time, more 

 practical supporter of allotments and small holdings is 

 to be found among the great land-owners of England 

 than Lord Carrington, who, especially at the outset of 

 the work he undertook in this direction, showed a 

 courage, a zeal, and a willingness to run what land- 

 owners and their agents generally would consider no 

 little risk, of which the world at large has but little 

 idea. Happily, his efforts met their deserved success, 

 for in an article contributed by him to the Nineteenth 

 Century in March, 1899, on ' The Land and the 

 Labourers,' he said : 



My practical experience of over thirty years is that small holdings 

 and allotments, not only keep villagers on the land, but that they 

 are, and always have been, a financial and social success. With 

 me they have succeeded, not only round an artisan town, but 

 equally on the clays of North and Mid Bucks, on the chalk hills 

 and in the valleys of South Bucks, on the light lands and ordinary 

 soils of North and Mid Lincolnshire, and, best of all, on the grand 

 land of the Lincolnshire fens. 



Lord Carrington has not been converted to the idea 

 of a peasant proprietary, for though Lincolnshire, with 

 its rich soil and abundant opportunities, is an ideal 

 county for small holders, he gave in his article a 

 melancholy picture of Lincolnshire freeholders who 



279 



