SMALL HOLDINGS. 351 



very much more cheaply than ourselves — and make the 

 most of our land in the production of other crops and, as 

 Mr. Wibberley rightly urges, of milk. German small 

 holders " make hay " out of the production of industrial 

 crops — not to speak of vines — which pay them so well 

 that they are known to have held out in bad seasons much 

 better than large farmers. Dr. Buchenberger, at the time 

 at the head of the Agricultural Department of Baden, 

 expressed to me his surprise at their extraordinary power 

 of endurance in the time of the great depression. " For 

 ten years," so he said, " these people have had bad harvests. 

 Their losses are estimated at about £2,000,000. Nevertheless 

 they go on and do not seem much the worse." This was 

 in a vine-growing district. But it is the same where tobacco, 

 or maize (for ripening), or teazle, or sugar-beet, etc., are 

 grown — sugar-beet, out of the cultivation of which, according 

 to the evidence of an expert witness, Herr Gerhard, the 

 " cow peasant " — that is, the peasant on so small a holding 

 that he cannot afford to keep bullocks or a horse, but has 

 to put his one or two cows under the yoke for ploughing 

 purposes — picks relatively the biggest profit. The same 

 thing may be said of small cultivators raising special high- 

 priced crops in France. However, small holdings can 

 grow very good wheat, and rye. And, putting special 

 produce for the moment out of consideration, to show the 

 power of endurance of small men in bad times, it deserves 

 to be mentioned that, alike in France, and even more 

 markedly in Italy, as I have been advised by official experts, 

 during the time of general prolonged depression, it was the 

 districts in which metayage [mezzadria) prevails where, 

 accordingly, holdings are small — in addition to which also, 

 as a further relief, rent is paid in kind — depression made 

 itself least felt. That agrees thoroughly with what our Poor 

 Law Commissioners of 1834 state in their Report, namely, 

 that " small occupiers employing no labour but their own 

 had managed to pull through " the exceptionally trying 

 times which preceded the reform of our Poor Laws. The 

 remarkable " weathering capacity " of small holders is a 

 strong argument in favour of small holdings. In some 



