PEASANT PROPRIETARY 213 



purpose of small holdings. This is not a large result 

 from an Act which has been in existence ten years, 

 but it is sufficient to show what can be done under 

 it, and that it is a workable measure. It will also 

 be found, on examination, that it has been successful 

 in the places where men of the non-territorial class 

 have been on the Councils, men free from prejudice 

 and who, from social and political considerations, have 

 taken a wide view of the question. 



This was the case in Worcestershire, where the 

 County Council have put the Act in force with un- 

 qualified success. Mr. Willis Bund (barrister-at-law), 

 Chairman of the County Council, took the wise and 

 public-spirited view that as Parliament had placed the 

 administration of the Act in the hands of local authori- 

 ties, it was the bounden duty of those authorities to 

 carry it out to the best of their ability ; and there is 

 no doubt that his view had great influence with the 

 Council. It was two members of the Council — Mr. 

 E. J. Bigwood and Mr. Frank Smith, both members of 

 firms of estate agents and auctioneers in Birmingham 

 — who suggested and pushed forward the purchase of 

 the land for the purpose of small holdings.^ 



It may safely be said, therefore, that but for the 

 presence of this class of men on the County Council, 

 the experiment of creating a peasant proprietary in 

 Worcestershire — if tried at all — would not have been 

 carried out with the same vigour and — what is all- 

 important — with the same personal belief in the prin- 

 ciple it contained. 



^ See "County Council Times," December, 1904. Mr. Frank Smith 

 is chairman of the Small Holdings Committee of the County Council, and 

 was for many years hon. secretary of the Rural Labourers' League, the 

 object of which is to promote all measures for the improvement of rural 

 life. 



