SMALL HOLDINGS. 353 



mic and political pre-occupations make us only too often 

 lose sight of it. You cannot have a stable, self-contained, 

 self-sufficing, contentedly working rural community with- 

 out small holdings. The first thing that the citizen, ready 

 to work for himself and for the country, wants, is a home. 

 And a home requires more to make it than the four bare walls 

 of a cottage. But, beyond a home, he wants touch and rela- 

 tions with neighbours contributing to happiness and well- 

 being. We had such life once, even with a much smaller 

 collective population — life in which within the rural parish 

 every one found his own proper place, enjoyed his own 

 rights, was able to contribute to the well-being and happi- 

 ness of the little country world. It is the loss of that happy 

 state of things evidently which has brought about the 

 desertion of the country and the unhealthy overcrowding 

 in towns. The need of a genuine racy village community 

 is felt in all climes. The Indian, happy in the recollection 

 of his characteristic " village community," mourns its loss, 

 and hopes to re-establish it by means of Co-operation. In 

 the West, again, statesmen like the late President, Mr. 

 Roosevelt, are keenly alive to the need of it, even among 

 a teeming population like that of the United States, among 

 people in one sense only too eager to crowd to the land. 

 Our Canadian kinsmen, in Saskatchewan and elsewhere, are 

 exerting themselves to create it. And in the far Hawaii 

 Islands authorities are busy trying to evolve it, once more 

 by means of Co-operation, out of the curiously mixed 

 chaos of races. Prussian autocracy is bent upon forming 

 it. But we ourselves do not appear to care about the one 

 thing economically and socially needful. " If the attrac- 

 tions of town life are to be counteracted and agricultural 

 labourers hfted from apathy and hopelessness into contented- 

 ness and activity of interest, a reality, a purpose, a meaning 

 must be given to village life." So writes Mr. Prothero. 

 And surely his argument speaks for itself. However, such 

 village life cannot be without small holdings, suitably appor- 

 tioned, as demand may regulate once artificial barriers, 

 running, as one would think, altogether counter to the 

 intentions of Nature, are removed. The man intended to 



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