Large and Small Holdings. 
15 
" That thae are plenty of examples of small cultmrea in England to guide 
xis if we choose to look around, and base our inquiry on general results, 
not on isolated instances, is the main conclusion I draw from the English 
figures. Scores of successful instances of small farming by suitable men, with 
suitable wires, on suitable soils and in suitable places, all of us can 
recall ; but scores too, if not hundreds of cases, without looking beyond our 
English shores, may be marshalled where the small farmer has lived a more 
miserable existence than the far more lightly worked and better remunerated 
labourer. We are not called on to adopt without qualification the dictum 
from the times of Arthur Young : ' Deduct frsm agriculture all the practice 
that has made it flourishing, and you have precisely the management of 
small &nns.' Neither on the other hand can those who use figures with 
some regard to the proprieties of statistical method, jump to the opposite 
conclusion, fotmded no doubt on generalization from some isolated and perhaps 
garden plot experiment, that ' a million labourers working for themselves 
would pnxluce far more wheat than the same land does when cultivated by 
the most scientific farmers,' " 
FOBEIGX C0U>'TEIES. 
It mav be well to glance for a short time at the number and 
the condition of the small owners and occupiers of land in some 
other civilized countries of the world. 
It is hardlv fair to compare the small English farmer with the 
cultivator of land in North America. In the United States, 
where the laws are expressly directed against the aggregation 
of land in large estates, we find there are more tenant-farmers 
than in any other country. 
The idea that farms in Canada and the L nited States of 
.^^jnerica do not exceed lt30 acres is quite erroneous. Small 
farms abound almost everywhere in the Eastern States, and the 
lar?er holding-s are to be found in the far ^\ est. ^lanv of these 
vast estates are well farmed, if continuous wheat-cropping without 
manure can rijhtlv be termed farming. W ith the organization 
of horse and manual labour, and the application of every kind 
of labour-saving implements and machinery, combined with the 
fertilitv of the virgin soil, the prairie farmers bevond the Mis- 
sissippi have driven wheat-growing from the New England 
States. The fierce competition of these W estern farmers has 
hurt their smaller brethren in the East almost as much as it 
has helped to ruin the English farmer. The small farmer of 
the older States of America has therefore to devote his 
energies to the production of those perishable articles which 
Lndi a ready market in the great cities of the Atlantic sea- 
board ; but even in that "land of promise" he has to work 
very diligently to make a competency, and at all times of the 
year he has to labour harder, and in the summer for much longer 
hours than the English labourer. 
During the last few years the financial position of the large 
