SMALL HOLDINGS. 331 



holders were a very valuable part of the community. The 

 small holder worked harder than the agricultural labourer. 

 In many cases his income was not so large and more precari- 

 ous. But for all that the condition of the small holder wa,s 

 happier than that of the agricultural labourer, because 

 he worked on his own and called no man master. Small 

 holdings fostered self-reliance, independence and initiative 

 among men who probably would not develop those faculties 

 if they spent all their lives in obeying orders. Besides 

 that, a small holding was a ladder which often enabled its 

 occupier to rise to the rank of farmer." 



Just a week previously Lord Selborne had declared in 

 the House of Lords that " there was nothing so urgent 

 as the increase of the number of people living upon the 

 land." By the side of the social aspect of the question, 

 which no doubt is the most weighty, in this country the 

 agricultural aspect is still comparatively neglected, because 

 as yet we have but little experience of the system. In 

 Germany, however, where small holding farming is of long 

 standing, and has stood the test of long experience, the 

 prevalence of small holding husbandry is set down as a 

 very valuable asset indeed to national Agriculture. The 

 nature of its produce is generally rather different from that 

 of large holding husbandry. But it is nearly always larger. 

 And that is not only because, as Mr. Prothero has rightly 

 testified, the small holder works harder than the hired man 

 of the larger farmer, but because, more especially where he 

 is owner of his holding, he works with greater interest, 

 with more brain power and with much less restriction as 

 to hours than the larger farmer's paid man. If he does 

 not precisely rival his negro brother of whom Mr. Booker 

 Washington tells us, who, having lost his donkey, harnessed 

 himself to the plough, of which his wife held the stilts, and 

 dragged the share across his field in moonlight nights — in 

 order not to incur the ridicule of his neighbours (he ended 

 as a wealthy farmer) — he works early and late, at any 

 hour when his interest calls upon him to do so — taking it 

 out at other times. A high German agricultural authority, 

 writing from Silesia, some years ago laid particular stress 



