352 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



districts abroad they produce better crops of cereals 

 than do the adjoining large estates. With Co-operation 

 to help them, they have the use of perfected machinery, 

 and advantageous arrangements for the employment of 

 machinery, within their reach, the same as large farmers 

 and, if the latter still effect a saving in production by reason 

 of the breadth of their breaks, the small make up for that 

 advantage by the more meticulous care that they can bestow 

 upon the crop in detail. The objection will not hold 

 water. 



Another objection raised apphes more particularly to 

 the question of small ownership. Accordingly it may be 

 well briefly to consider the point : Shall we go for owner- 

 ship, or for tenancy ? Not that that point possesses any- 

 thing like the importance that has been attributed to it, 

 or that the one thing necessarily excludes the other. How- 

 ever, my belief is that in practice the advantage will be 

 found to lie so much on the side of ownership that, once we 

 have much small cultivation, we may securely count upon 

 soon also having ownership preponderating. However, let 

 us consider ! 



The Small Holdings question is, above all things, a social 

 question, a question of creating homes and renewing country 

 life. The renewal of village life, the creation of a fresh 

 rural world, a world pulsating with contented activity, 

 repeopling the deserted country, the formation of new 

 communities instinct with a spirit of their own, but all 

 combining to make a happy and contented country — 

 communities in the existence of which every one Hving within 

 them can take pleasure and by willing and cheerful labour 

 contribute to the common well-being, with a joyful realisa- 

 tion of the sense of citizenship — all of which influences are 

 calculated to bring back people to the country and make 

 them take root there, decentralising society, in the sense 

 of spreading it out over a wider area, so as to counteract 

 unhealthy over-population at one point and wasteful and 

 dismal desert at the other — ought really to be the main 

 aim in our whole Small Holdings polic}', because it affects 

 the well-being of the Commonwealth. However, our econo- 



