JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



smaller holdings employed more labour than the original farmer with his 

 300 acres. The largest holder on the estate, who farmed twenty-nine 

 acres, had kept some rough accounts, for the accuracy of which he could 

 vouch. In the year 1901 that man paid more than £250, cash down, for 

 labour, and received £ J 600 from the produce of his holding. These were 

 the men who for years had been going into Birmingham to offer their 

 labour at almost any price, only to receive the answer, " No ; we are over- 

 done with labour." To-day these men drove into Birmingham in their 

 own horses and carts with the produce of their holdings, and said to the very 

 same people, " You did not want our labour ; will you have our vegetables 

 and fruit?" and the reply was " Y 7 es ; we can do with any amount of 

 those." Now these men afforded employment in the workshops by 

 spending their money on shovels, spades, and other agricultural instru- 

 ments, instead of, as formerly, competing with the workmen in the work- 

 shops. The home market was, after all, the best of our markets ; and 

 yet but little attention was paid to it. Setting aside meat and corn, and 

 confining himself to the smaller articles of agriculture, which this country 

 was, perhaps, better able to produce than any country in Europe, he 

 found that the trade in them was fifty-six millions sterling. He some- 

 times smiled when he read complaints at meetings of Chambers of 

 Commerce about a few tons of girders having been imported from Belgium. 

 Not a word was said about the importation of six millions' sterling worth 

 of cheese. He appealed to members engaged in the county councils to 

 follow the example of Worcestershire, and put the Small Holdings Act 

 into operation. It might be said that there was no demand for these 

 holdings. Of course there was no demand. Peasant proprietary had 

 been well described as a lost art in this country. But the supply would 

 create the demand, for there were hundreds of thousands in our big towns 

 who would be only too glad to go back to the land. There was no 

 demand for education in 1870 among the uneducated ; yet the country 

 thought it essential for the public good to give them education. Another 

 objection was that the State should not set up men in business in one 

 class of trade. That was a point that was urged by political economists, 

 who, Heaven be thanked, were in a very small minority in these days. 

 His answer was that there was no business like that of the land ; that 

 the land was the origin and source of every trade in the world ; the trade 

 of every kind depended for its success on the purchasing power of the 

 land. Great interest was taken in the purchasing power of foreign 

 countries, and large sums of money were spent in advancing it. But 

 why not take an equal interest in the increase of the purchasing power of 

 Worcestershire ? If they got a pound more to-day from the land than 

 yesterday, it was an additional pound to be spent in the workshops. 

 Landlords and farmers were interested in this small holdings movement, 

 for it meant more rent for the landlords and more labour at the command 

 of the farmers. The education which was given to the agricultural 

 labourers had created in them a profound dissatisfaction with their lot 

 as mere wage-earners, which he rejoiced in, and they would continue to 

 hasten from the land to better themselves elsewhere unless the chance 

 was given them of becoming themselves cultivators of the land. In Belgium 

 the small holders and the farmers lent each other mutual assistance — the 



