446 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



Moreover, the subdivision of the soil is perfectly compatible with 

 the methods of la grande culture itself ; the operations of hus- 

 bandry may all be on a great scale, while the land is held in 

 shares by a number of persons, like shares in a railway. I see 

 no practical impossibility in such a solution of the problem how 

 to combine the land system of Flanders with all the improve- 

 ments of the age. 



It is often asserted that poor lands can be brought into culti- 

 vation only by large and wealthy owners. This is exactly the re- 

 verse of the truth at least as regards the most intractable soils. 



In Belgium there are lands so sterile by nature that one-half 

 of all the capital sunk in them is either lost or yields hardly any 

 returns so that it is not in the interest of any capitalist to 

 work them. In La Campine all those who have attempted to 

 set up large farms, were they ever so well managed, have ruined 

 themselves, or, at any rate, lost money by it. 



It is the small cultivator only who, spade in hand, can fertilise 

 the waste, and perform prodigies which nothing but his love of 

 the land could enable him to accomplish. His day's work he 

 counts for nothing ; he spares no exertion, and shuns no trouble ; 

 and by doing double the work, he produces double the result he 

 would do if he worked for hire. Thus he has made fertile farms 

 of the dunes and quicksands which border our dangerous coast. 

 Penetrating into the interior of these dunes in the neighbourhood 

 of Nieuport, you observe little cottages with a few acres of rye 

 and potatoes around them. Their owners succeed in keeping a 

 few cows, which the children take out to graze wherever a blade of 

 salt grass can be found. With the manure of their cattle they mix 

 seaweed and whatever animal matter the sea throws up, and thus 

 they raise crops of first-rate potatoes and vegetables. La Veluwe 

 the Campine of Holland has been reclaimed in like manner inch 

 by inch by the peasantry. I have elsewhere given an account of 

 the rise of one of these sand villages within recent years. 1 



In Savoy, in Switzerland, in Lombardy, in all mountainous 

 countries, land has been reclaimed by la petite culture, which 

 large landowners could not have broached without loss. In those 

 1 See "ficonomie rurale de la Neerlande," p. 212. 



