OWNERSHIP AND TENANCY. 127 



the foreman or manager. He watches for showers and sunny 

 mornings, and up with the lark looks forward to harvest with 

 hope. And in winter he has his flour, potatoes, bacon, eggs, milk 

 and butter, and can crowd his heaviest work into the best weather, 

 under nobody's dictation, but his own common sense. And he 

 is not the man to waste corners and headlands and wide fence 

 spaces he pays too much rent to waste the land. 



I know there are a few careless small holders. So there are 

 bad farmers ; but the small man is soon hunted up and threatened 

 if he does not improve, not always so the large farmer. 



I am out to re-establish rural life upon a basis that will give 

 our returning men something to live and labour for. Not an 

 easy time for them, but a reward for a hard time, and every 

 assistance during that hard struggle. Something to aim at and 

 look forward to ; and the father is anxious to see his son set up 

 in a small holding, and will sacrifice almost anything to give him 

 a start. 



And what a competition there is for every vacant holding: 

 do let my son have it ? And these are the men to make it pay : 

 they have been trained for it, and love it, and if any of the 

 lads do not love it they clear off before they are twenty. 



Critics are too apt to chip the 3mall holder and pronounce 

 him a failure, and agriculturists very largely envy him his 

 opportunity. 



Given a fair chance he will generally succeed, and will, un- 

 doubtedly, increase the production as he is doing already in 

 numbers of cases. 



The industrial farm, it may be argued, is different from the 

 multiple farms of Lincolnshire for instance, but in some ways 

 the analogy may perhaps be allowed. I don't know anyone 

 interested in the welfare of rural England who will praise the 

 system of multiple farming. 



The immediate effect of the accumulation of separate farms 

 in one occupation is the withdrawal of the sitting tenant, and 

 placing a foreman in the farmhouse formerly occupied by the 

 tenant farmer. In South Lincolnshire some twenty-five to thirty 

 such farmers and their families have been displaced. This removes 

 persons interested in the village, is injurious to traders and every 

 description of social movement, and religious organisations also 

 suffer. 



It becomes more difficult to find good men to go on the repre- 

 sentative local bodies, and in many cases the large farmer is 

 able to avoid obligation to house the workers, except the head 

 horseman and cattleman, besides the foreman. The other labourers 

 are drawn from villages and towns some distance away. Much 

 of the work is given out to gang-masters, who collect their men 

 and convey them to and from work. 



