SMALL HOLDINGS 149 



move rapidly if some of the great landlords, each in 

 their own district, put themselves at the head of a 

 workable scheme. Of course if the landlord is to 

 become the entrepreneur and organizer of industry for 

 his tenantry, he will have to work at his task very 

 seriously ; good intentions alone have always proved 

 harmful. 



Naturally at that juncture one heard much about 

 small holdings and the prospects of the new tenants 

 who have been set on the land by recent legislation. 

 As might perhaps have been expected, the large 

 farmers with whom we talked had very little belief 

 in the future of the small holdings. Most of them 

 held, and rightly enough so far as their own districts 

 were concerned, that the large man with capital will 

 get more out of the land than any small man possibly 

 can. Even with fruit and vegetables the capitalist's 

 power of organizing labour, and his command of 

 manures, his power of doing certain operations like 

 spraying, which are only cheap on a large scale, must 

 mean a greater production per acre. But while the 

 intensive large farmer can thus beat the intensive 

 small holder, there are many large farmers who never 

 attempt to get the maximum profitable yield out of their 

 land, but trust to skimming a small return off a wide 

 area, and these are the men that from a national 

 point of view are not doing their duty by the land, 

 but might profitably be replaced by small occupiers 

 who will be driven to get more out of the soil in 

 order to obtain a living at all. But though the large 

 farmers did not agree with the small holding move- 

 ment, they were not unsympathetic. Many of them 

 admitted there was an opening for a few men to 

 meet local demands in their own districts, while of 

 course in certain places, like the Isle of Axholme, the 



