426 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



obtained and worked by the co-operation of peasant 

 farmers, each paying in proportion to the days or hours 

 he made use of the machine. Neither is there anything 

 in the superior education and intelligence often claimed 

 for the large farmer. Mr. Kay tells us that in Saxony 



' * the peasants endeavour to outstrip one another in the quantity 

 and quality of the produce, in the preparation of the ground, and 

 in the general cultivation of their respective portions. All the little 

 proprietors are eager to find out how to farm so as to produce the 

 greatest results ; they diligently seek after improvements ; they 

 send their children to agricultural schools, in order to fit them to 

 assist their fathers ; and each proprietor soon adopts a new 

 improvement introduced by any of his neighbours." 



Finally, under this system of small peasant culti- 

 vators, who reap all the fruits of their own labours, the 

 land is improved in an almost incredible manner. The 

 bare sands of Belgium and Flanders have been gradually 

 converted into gardens, and Mr. Kay sums up his observa- 

 tions by saying : 



" The peasant farming of Prussia, Holland, Saxony, and Switzer- 

 land is the most perfect and economical farming I have ever wit- 

 nessed in any country ; " 



thus illustrating the famous axiom of Arthur Young a 

 century ago : 



" Give a man secure possession of a bleak rock, and he will turn 

 it into a garden." 



It will hardly be said that the workers of America and 

 of England to-day are less industrious, less intelligent, less 

 influenced by the desire for an independent life and a 

 home which shall be indeed each man's castle, than were 

 the peasants of various parts of Europe half a century ago. 

 Give them, therefore, equal or even superior opportunities, 

 and you will obtain at least equal, probably far superior 

 results. 



The reason why we may expect better results is, that the 

 system of peasant-proprietors, from which most of our illus- 

 trations have necessarily been drawn, had in it the seeds of 

 decay and failure from the very same causes as those which 



