THE UNEMPLOYED 303 



English workmen. To expect, therefore, that the town labourer 

 who has failed can be readily transformed into the rural labourer 

 who will succeed is to expect miracles. 



If these remarks are just as regards ordinary agri- 

 cultural conditions, they apply still more forcibly to 

 those various phases of the lesser agriculture with 

 which small holders would especially deal. 



In the first place, one must remember that the 

 division of the personnel of British agriculture into 

 ' landlord, farmer, and labourer ' no longer has the 

 same force as of old. The division to-day is becoming 

 more and more a twofold rather than a threefold one : 

 the land-owner and the small tenant-farmer, or culti- 

 vator, who either does all the necessary work himself, 

 with the help of his family, or else obtains outside 

 assistance on a limited scale or on rare occasions only. 



Then the fact that Science now enters much more 

 fully into the general work of agriculture than it did in 

 the days when the largest number of labourers was 

 engaged on the soil is especially true of the various 

 industries in which small holders would have the best 

 scope for their energies, so that not only the small 

 holders themselves, but assistants and labourers, where 

 they are wanted, must represent a type of men often 

 superior alike to the average ploughman and to the 

 average town labourer. Industries, in fact, such as 

 dairying, horticulture, floriculture, stock-raising, etc., 

 as distinguished from the growing of corn, are occupa- 

 tions requiring technical knowledge, skill, business 

 capacity, and unremitting personal attention on the 

 part of those engaged therein qualities and qualifica- 

 tions not necessarily possessed by even the average 

 farmer of the old school, and still less by the average 

 agricultural labourer of the passing generation, however 

 efficient the latter may have been in the days when the 



