Condition of the Enylish Agricultural Labourer, 1871. 3G1 
fvs tlie cultivation of tliis quantity does not appreciably inter- 
fere with a man's daily work. On tlie other hand, there is a 
great amount of evidence to show that the small farmer, espe- 
pecially if he have to hire labour, is harder worked and not so 
prosperous as the well-paid labourer, and that the prevalence of 
small farms in a district rather tends to a low range of wages 
and inferior cultivation. The truth is, that modern successful 
farming requires capital, and if an occupier have not capital in 
money, he must have the capital of the worth of his labour to 
put into the land. 
Mr. Henley speaks of the small farmers of Durham as " an 
honest, industrious race, and though, in their hard struggle 
to live, their children fail to obtain sufficient school instruction, 
being usually taken from school at an early age, as their parents 
were before them, to pick up a bit of schooling where they can, 
yet they hold a position that bridges over the distance between 
capitalists and labourers." * Mr. Stanhope, speaking of the 
small freeholders of Lincolnshire, who are usually in the Fen 
district or the potato-growing country of the Isle of Axholme, 
says, — " The small freeholders are a class in many cases very 
little raised above the hired labourers, and more hardly w'orked 
and less well fed and housed. They are very numerous in many 
parts of the Fens. In the Isle of Axholme there are many hun- 
dreds, and as a great part of the land that is sold is being cut 
up, their number is probably increasing. Their children are 
worked earlier and have less schooling than those of hired 
labourers." | 
Similar testimony as to the hard-working, industrious habits 
of the small farmers in the dales of Yorkshire and in some parts 
ot Cambridgeshire is given by Mr. Portman, who says — " These 
small occupiers cultivate their land by themselves and their 
< hiklren, rarely employing a labourer. The loss, therefore, of 
their children's labour, even at 9 or 10 years of age, would be 
fatal, as they are too poor to hire labour." J In the small-farm 
districts of Dorsetshire, " the occupiers cultivate the farms with 
the help of their families, and require little, if any, hired labour. 
The populatibn in consequence is less well off than in the dis- 
tricts just described, for the wages are lower; there is very 
little piece-work, and many men are throv/n out of work in 
winter." § In Shropshire, Hampshire, and Devonshire, the evi- 
dence is the same. In Wiltshire, Mr. Eolam, Lord Ailesbury's 
agent, speaks of small holders " as a body almost worse off than 
many of the labourers, because their capital is small, their work 
* First Report, 186S, p. 57. f Ibid., p. 74. 
§ Second Eeport, 18G9, p. 3. 
VOL. VII. — S. S. 
X Ibid., p. 97. 
2 B 
