SMALL HOLDINGS 19 



rewarded. There are thousands of acres 

 of land within sight of St Paul's Cathedral 

 which do not return a gross profit of £5 per 

 acre per annum, and yet within the same 

 limited area there are market gardeners 

 and nurserymen — the majority of whom are 

 hiunbly born and imperfectly educated, but 

 who by experience have become accomplished 

 and skilled men — who are able to realise from 

 £100 to £1000 per acre for their produce — 

 in large part, it is true, by the aid of glass. 

 if this is not farming in the accepted sense 

 of the word, it is crop production, and the 

 margin between the figures we have sug- 

 gested is just as wide, and no wider, than 

 the capacity which exists between man 

 and man. 



Great Britain is the only European country 

 of agricultural importance in which Small 

 Holdings are confined to a comparatively 

 small area. The total number of persons 

 employed upon the whole of the farms in 

 Great Britain in 1908, inclusive of the occu- 

 piers, amounts to 1,340,000, of whom 324,000 

 are females. The number of agricultural 

 holdings of land is 508,629, or, making 

 allowance for those cases in which one farmer 

 occupies more than one holding, we get, 'in 



