1908.] 



Creation of Small Holdings. 



5 



in the first instance to the supposition that the neighbourhood 

 is suitable for the creation of small holdings. For instance, 

 a forward district will suggest the production of those fruits 

 and vegetables for which very high prices are obtained when 

 they are the first of their kind on the market ; the presence of 

 common rights will give rise to small agricultural holdings 

 for the rearing or fattening of the stock turned out ; or, if the 

 applicants for new holdings are partly employed in some 

 industrial pursuit or have many opportunities for piecework, 

 it is likely that the holdings would be most advantageously 

 used for the growing of produce for home consumption. 



So far I have been treating the subject as though the initiation 

 of new holdings were to approximate to a process of natural 

 evolution, the new holding growing, as it were, out of the par- 

 ticular conditions of its environment. But how far is this 

 the right line to take ? It certainly is the safest so far in those 

 places where there are good examples to follow, for this reason : 

 the only education our small holders are receiving for the 

 moment is the education of experience. Give a man a plot of 

 land in his own locality which he can cultivate in the particular 

 way he is used to, and the chances are that he will succeed. 

 But put the average man under new conditions, or try and make 

 him work on lines to which he is not accustomed, and the 

 chances are he will fail. Now it will generally be found that in 

 those places where no special circumstances have given rise to 

 an independent and special form of small holding, that cultiva- 

 tion on a small scale is merely an imitation of the large farming 

 in the district. That is to say, you tend to find little grass 

 holdings in the districts of large cheese or grazing farms, and 

 (although to a lesser degree) little arable holdings in the corn 

 and fattening districts. In the less prosperous parts of England 

 these small native holdings are, only too often, of a type one 

 would certainly not wish to see perpetuated, however much 

 they were characteristic of the neighbourhood ; I allude to the 

 struggling survivals of more prosperous days, with their bad 

 stock and bad seed, their time-wasting implements and their 

 antiquated methods of cultivation and marketing. These are 

 living arguments in favour of the introduction of new ideas. 

 We have, therefore, the two aspects of the case to consider : 

 the desirability of fostering and of making use of the local man's 



