APPENDICES. 171 



selves. What is the case of France? In France you have 

 5,000,000 people on the land. The majority of them are 

 small holders who own their land. Let me say once more, 

 speaking to the labourers, that one of my aspirations has 

 been that the number of small holders of land should be 

 increased.* I believe that these proposals will tend to 

 increase it, and that it will bo to your advantage as 

 farmers also if you mate the laboiirers partners with you. 

 If you can give them the same interest as you have, then 

 you will work together, then you will hz what you have 

 never been — a power in the land. Well, with these 5,000,000 

 small holders in France — and I might come nearer home 

 and say that with the hundreds and thousands of small 

 holders in Ireland — the bogey of the dear loaf has no 

 meaning whatever. They are not frightened by it, they 

 do not believe in it. (Loud laughter.) If the canvassers 

 who recently went round to the electors of Oswestry and 

 told the wives of the labourers that if my proposals were 

 carried their loaf would rise from 5d. to lOd. — if these 

 people, I say, were to go round in the French villages — 

 well, they would have a very warm reception. (Laughter, 

 and 'Hear, hear.') Wherever small holders exist in any 

 number there you will find that they, at any rate, arc not 

 afraid. They do not believe that to give a certain advan- 

 tage to the home prodiiction is going to be an injury to the 

 home commerce. (Cheers.) But now let me go a little 

 further into the case of France. They have 18,000,000 acres 

 of land under wheat cultivation, and we have only about 

 1^ million. Those 18 millions of corn land have produced 

 18 millions of acres of straw, and having the straw and 

 having the offals the farmer is able to rear a very much 

 larger number of oxen and of dairy cows. The oxen and 

 the cows tvirn the straw into manure; the manure is used 

 to fertilise the soil; and the poor soils produce under this 

 system an enormous amount of vegetables and fruit and 

 all the by-products that are sent into this country to com- 

 pete with the production of the farmers and the labourers 

 of the United Kingdom, very much to their disadvantage. 



* Mr. Chamberlain was Chahmmi of the Select Com- 

 mit tee on Small Holdings. 



