:O2 Large and Small Holdings 



districts farms of 500 to 1000 acres could find no tenants 1 . On the 

 other hand it was a common experience 2 to find the demand for 

 small and medium farms very vigorous 3 . Before the Commission of 

 1894 land agents complained of the extreme difficulty of finding 

 tenants for the large farms 4 , but stated that "just as the area 

 decreases, so is the disposition to take farms increased 5 ." Large 

 farmers threw their holdings on the landlords' hands and took small 

 farms instead 6 . Landlords who had consolidated their farms between 

 1850 and 1880 found this most disconcerting, while those who had 

 resisted the tendency rejoiced. " I am quite certain," wrote one, 

 "if I had taken the advice of my friends thirty years ago, and 

 concentrated my farms, I should have them all now on my hands 7 ." 

 "The demand for renting small holdings is something quite 

 astonishing 8 ," said Mr C. A. Fyffe in 1889. In one case in Yorkshire 

 there were no fewer than 59 applicants for a farm of 26 acres 9 , and 

 this was not exceptional. 



If it was thus hard to let large farms and easy to let small and 

 medium farms, there is no difficulty in accounting for the tendency to 

 favour the latter on the part of the landlord. As the statistics show, 

 this tendency developed slowly and in face of numerous hindrances. 

 Many landlords left their farms long unlet, and put in bailiffs to 

 manage them. But this system was only for temporary relief and 

 was not as a rule maintained long. In a few years the landlord, 

 finding that no tenants came, while other landlords had numbers of 

 applicants for their smaller farms, began to consider and then to carry 

 out a policy of division. 



What this change in the relative demand for large and small 

 farms proves is that the profitableness of the first had decreased 

 while that of the second was increasing. It was frequently said that 

 the reason the large farms remained unlet was that in these days of 



1 Report of 1894, qu. 31,183 : " If a farm of anything over 500 acres is given up now, 

 I may say that it is an impossibility to let it ; nobody will take more than 500 acres." 



2 S. B. L. Druce, in Journal of the Farmers Club, November 1903, p. 7. 



3 Report of 1894, qu. 477 : " For the most part, the farms that we have in hand are 

 large farms. The smaller farms are easily let as compared with the large farms." So also 

 qu. 763 and 871. 



4 Ibid., qu. 14,874; and similar evidence in qu. 4480, 4571 ff., 8061, 13,420-13,421. 

 6 Ibid., qu. 7*37-7238- 



6 Ibid., qu. 16,808 and 16,963. 



7 Quoted by C. S. Read, Large and Small Holdings, in Journal R. A. S., 1887, p. 23. 

 The landlord in question was Sir Massey Lopes. 



8 Small Holdings Report, 1889, qu. 6076. 



8 Eyre and Kyle, op. cit. p. 27 ; and also p. 23. 



