THE AGRICULTURAL LADDER 105 



cultural labour in this country are adopted, and given effect 

 to in good time, these changes, together with the maintenance 

 of the present rates of wages, will, in our opinion, result in 

 a large number of ex-Service men being willing to undertake 

 employment on farms, and thus provide the number of men 

 required." 



In regard to the place of small holdings in the agri- 

 cultural system of the country, we desire to emphasise 

 the great value of the labourer having an outlook in 

 life. Every Iboy who begins as a labourer on a farm 

 ought to know that he has a chance of becoming a 

 farmer ; that as a reward of industry, honesty and 

 intelligence he may rise above the rank of a hired 

 worker, and through the allotment attain to a small 

 holding, and ultimately, perhaps, to a large farm. 

 This scope for ambition is of incalculable importance, 

 whether many or few actually arrive. Though it will 

 only be the exceptional man who succeeds in mount- 

 ing the agricultural ladder to the very top, a large 

 number of labourers ought in due course to become 

 independent small holders. To every man who emi- 

 grates to the Dominions, the prospect of owning his 

 holding is a certainty if he works hard and saves — and 

 it is just this certainty of independence which is the 

 great attraction of the settler's life, and the place of 

 the small holding in our agricultural economy here at 

 home should be the same. The function of a well- 

 organised system of small holdings is to prevent the 

 labourer's life being a blind-alley employment, and 

 to convert it into merely the first rung of the agri- 

 cultural ladder. It is consequently of fundamental 

 importance that our small-holdings system should be 

 sound, and afford to the small holder all possible oppor- 

 8* 



