LAND TONURES 2«9 



If any reasonable man can find au^lit to defend in the 

 manipulation of the agricultural industry by the "territorial 

 aristocracy," under a fiscal system which finds its antithesis 

 in the present Free-trade one, and which many landowners 

 declare to be the source of their troubles and the origin of agri- 

 cultural decline, it will only afford Ijut one more example of 

 that widespread spirit of fatuous contention wliich is in reality 

 the bottom of half the troubles that have befallen the British 

 people. More work and less talk is what is wanted in this 

 country. 



The Big Fakm System a Failuke 



The " landed gentry," coupled with the " yeoman " system, 

 should now be briefiy examined and compared with that of 

 other countries. If there is anything in this " big farm " system 

 which proclaims it to be a better and more economical one 

 than the smaller farm system run by Occupying-Owners, 

 then there should be evidence of it forthcoming. Those who 

 support the big farm system must produce their corrobora- 

 ting testimony, for the reason that the writer cannot find 

 any. Per contra, there is overwhelming proof that the intensive 

 systems of France, Belgium, Germany, and other countries, 

 where small farmers are the rule and large ones the excep- 

 tion, are far and away ahead of the other, which is regarded 

 as wasteful, and suitable only to new and sparsely populated 

 countries like Canada and Argentina, where land is plentiful, 

 and cheap labour scarce, but utterly unsuited to the exigent 

 requirements of the people of the densely populated countries of 

 Europe, where land is dear and employment difficult to obtain. 



llere is one reference to the subject from Germany, although 

 scores might be produced from France and every countiy in 

 Europe — 



" The small agriculturists of Germany produce, on the whole, 

 larger harvests per acre than do the large landowners who cultivate 

 their fiekls with hired labour. Largely owing to this difference, the 

 middle and the West of Grcrmany are chiefly devoted to high culture. 

 In the East of Germany, where the large landowners sit, we find 

 poor fields, less thorough cultivation and smaller crops. East 

 Germany thus resembles Great Britain not only in this, that the land 

 is in the hands of a few large owners, who like to enjoy themselves 

 in town and who leave the supervision of their esttites to their paid 

 underlings, but in the fact that in those districts the raisin? of live 

 stock is more developed than is the cultivation of the soil. Never- 

 theless we discover the surprising fact that the small landowners in 

 the middle and the "West of Germany are not only more efilicient in 



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