THE ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER 565 



Better prospects and cottages ? How are these to be provided ? I 

 will try to answer the question by the help of the experience which 

 I have gathered. It has been said of me that I am "a small- 

 holdings man," that I want " to cut up England into small- 

 holdings." Well, I am a strong believer in such holdings, with 

 sundry important limitations. Who would not be when he has 

 found, as undoubtedly I have (of course with exceptions), that 

 wherever small-holdings exist in England there is comparative 

 prosperity, great love of the soil, and a desire to cultivate it, an 

 increasing as compared with a diminishing population, a large 

 production of children as compared, at any rate in many instances, 

 with a small production of children, and a considerable addition to 

 the supply of local labour ? 



But now come the limitations. I desire to state quite clearly I 

 do not believe that small-holdings can be artificially created at this 

 period of our history. The desire and demand for them must 

 spring up among the population ; they cannot be forced upon the 

 population with any prospect of success. To take an example, it 

 would be useless for the government to provide, say, fifty millions 

 of money and bid a department to create small-holdings to that 

 value. It would only lose most of its money, and in the end find 

 many of the holdings on its hands. Also various districts in 

 England, owing to local conditions of soil, markets, and lack of 

 means of communication, are not suitable to this class of occupier 

 or owner at the present low values of agricultural produce. 



Still, in every county there are men more, probably, than any 

 one imagines who desire small-holdings, who would work them 

 to great advantage to themselves and the State, and, by their 

 example, would encourage others to follow in their steps. Parlia- 

 ment, recognizing the existence of such men, has, it is true, 

 already passed an act the Small-Holdings Act of 1892 

 designed to assist them. But the administration of that law has 

 been left in the hands of the county councils, who, with the ex- 

 ception of those of Worcestershire, of Cambridgeshire on a very 

 small scale, and, I think, of one other county at least I know 

 of no others have allowed its excellent provisions to become a 

 dead letter. Unless, therefore, the councils can be moved to take 



