40 POSSIBLE DEVELOPMENTS 



productive level with a comparatively small expenditure 

 on labour per acre. Not only is capital generally defi- 

 cient, but in many cases where the occupier may be 

 possessed of adequate means his standard of manage- 

 ment is so low, his business organization so imperfect, 

 that he relies for his profits upon cheap farming over 

 an extensive area. In most districts one is familiar 

 with the successful farmer, who during the depression 

 learnt how to manage his land cheaply to meet the 

 prevailing prices, and then and since has put farm to 

 farm until he has control of a scattered area of two to 

 five thousand acres. As managers of each of the farms 

 making up his total he employs uneducated bailiffs ; 

 the buying and selling is the only part of the business 

 that is unified in his own hands, and even that business 

 is often conducted in the most personal fashion without 

 any system of accounts. There is no organization com- 

 parable to that which any other industry of the same 

 magnitude would possess, and the resulting social 

 structure is deplorable. There is one man absorbing 

 the profits of a wide area ; below him are only the 

 labourers and the few bailiffs, whose wages are but 

 a little better than those of the labourers ; the old 

 farm houses are either let off or are in a dilapidated 

 condition, providing a few rooms for the bailiffs to 

 whom they are turned over. 



The suggestion now put forward is that large farms 

 of anything from 2,000 to 10,000 acres of land should 

 be organized and managed as business enterprises, 

 each under the control of a general manager, but 

 with due provision of assistant managers and heads 

 of departments to ensure efficiency in all the stages* 

 There are no special characteristics about farming to 



