The Size and Tenure of Farms in France. 



what is the working force of agriculturists engaged in farm- 

 ing operations in any capacity on the holdings to which 

 reference has just been made. The total, it would seem, 

 amounted to 6,647,044. Of these, 2,199,220 were exclusively 

 proprietors, farming their own lands themselves, or by means 

 of a bailiff. Another 1,188,025 persons cultivated their own 

 land, but worked also at the same time on the land of others 

 in the quality of tenants, metayers, or day-labourers. The 

 total number of farming proprietors was, accordingly, 

 3,387,245, of whom nearly two-thirds were owners pure and 

 simple. 



The tenantry of France may be classified as tenant proper 

 — 1,061,401, of whom 475,778 also owned some land — and 

 metayers— 344, 1 68, of whom 123,297 also cultivated a holding 

 of their own. Outside of these categories, to make up the 

 total of agricultural workers there were brought into account 

 1,210,081 day labourers, of whom nearly half, or 588,950, 

 were, in a more or less minute fashion, apparently land- 

 owners as well as hired workers, while these again were 

 supplemented by the regular staff of farm servants of various 

 grades employed by the cultivators of land in France, which 

 numbered 1,832,174 persons of both sexes. 



It will be noticed that the figures now quoted as to the 

 number of individual farmers of the owning class are very 

 considerably fewer than the number of separate owner- 

 farmed holdings, distinguished in the preceding pages, and 

 assuming the classification just made to have been an exhaus- 

 tive one, a large proportion of the farmer- owners would 

 appear to farm more than one of the units of cultivation 

 distinguished as a " holding.'* The number of cases where 

 more than one holding was farmed by tenants or metayers 

 was, on the other hand, comparatively small. 



