122 THE LAND AND ITS PROBLEMS 



This will make our area of land go further — for where 

 an Englishman asks for 50 acres, the Dane asks for 25 

 and makes more of them, and earns a larger profit, than 

 the Englishman from his 50 acres. 



We have now arrived at a point when we can discuss 

 the relative economy of the small holding in comparison 

 with the larger holding. On the one hand there is the 

 out-and-out advocate for small holdings — generally a 

 townsman and a theorist, who knows nothing of the 

 economy of either small or large holdings, and who 

 has an impracticable vision of all the land of the 

 United Kingdom being divided up amongst small- 

 holders. On the other side you have a large body of 

 people with a practical knowledge of agriculture who, 

 while they admit that the maintenance and even the 

 development of small holdings is desirable on social 

 and national grounds, say that they are not and cannot 

 be economic. 



That small holdings are not altogether uneconomic, 

 even to-day, is clearly proved by the fact that there 

 exist some 230,000 old-established small holdings ; they 

 would not exist at all unless the men were making a 

 living, and they certainly would not be making a living 

 unless they were clearing more per acre than the average 

 profit per acre obtained on the larger farm. Even in the 

 present unorganized condition of our agriculture (and the 

 smallholder suffers from this want of organization far 

 more acutely than does the large farmer) such figures as 

 are available tend to prove that our small holdings, in 

 spite of the present unsatisfactory conditions, produce 

 more food per acre, and a larger profit per acre, for 

 the cultivator than do the large farms. In no continental 

 country would it be necessary to adduce proof of this, 

 for it is an accepted fact. 



