Conclusion 211 



breeding, or sheep-farming remain profitable, the large farm will 

 survive, owing to the intensive application of capital which in these 

 branches of agriculture gives it an absolute advantage over the small 

 holding. But it will continue to make way for small holdings 

 where the other branches of production are most profitable, and above 

 all where the small holders succeed in organising themselves co-opera- 

 tively. It will give way to the small holding, that is to say, where 

 intensity of labour is of greater importance than intensive application 

 of capital, as is the case in most forms of stock-farming and in fruit 

 and vegetable culture. 



In the last resort it must always be the condition of the market 

 which will determine the solution of the problem of the unit of holding. 

 Non-economic tendencies may of course influence and limit the 

 natural economic development : and here lies a great danger to the 

 national economy 1 . For every hindrance to a necessary economic 

 development is an injury to the mass of the people of the nation 

 concerned. But for that very reason whatever social or political 

 hindrances exist to the natural evolution of the unit of agricultural 

 holding in England will not be permitted to continue. The people 

 have the power, through their Parliamentary government, to get rid 

 of conditions which are seen to be hurtful to their interests. 



The continued development of the small holdings system appears 

 to be in every way advantageous to the national economy. It com- 

 pensates for the decay of the large farm system in proportion as the 

 extension of stock-farming and petite cttlture compensates for the 

 unprofitableness of corn-crops. No doubt these branches of production 

 make greater demands on the capacity of the individual agriculturist 

 than corn-growing did. Small farming puts a greater strain on human 

 faculties, and demands a greater output of personal energy, than was 

 necessary in the days when the profits on corn were steady and the 

 large farm system ruled. But just because its survival and development 



1 A gloomy picture was painted of certain tendencies of this description by Mr W. Sea wen 

 Blunt in the Nineteenth Century for 1906 (Vol. Lix), p. 964. He says: "One thing 

 however stands absolutely in the way, and must be changed before chicken fanning can 

 become at all a general industry. I say it with regret, but without hesitation, chicken farming 

 and fox-hunting cannot exist together ; and if we want to maintain the one we must not 

 maintain the other. Chicken and egg farms fail principally in Sussex because to escape the 

 depredations of foxes, the chickens cannot be let run freely in the fields and hedgerows, 

 where to a large extent they should pick up their living. Shut up in wire enclosures the 

 cost of feeding' is too great. The fox is a wide night-roamer, and cannot be dealt with 

 locally, as is the case with other vermin, by help of trap or gun or poison. Until therefore 

 he ceases to be preserved by landowners it is useless to talk of our competing in Sussex with 

 the chicken industries of France, where the fox finds no quarter." 



142 



