Profit-Sharing in Agrimlture. 
773 
1 do not dispute that the proprietorship of a small holding 
may be of advantage to a person who does not depend solely 
upon it for the means of livelihood ; or that in the neighbour- 
hood of tovms, where there is a good market for the fruits of 
spade-culture, and where favoui-able opportunities exist for the 
obtaining of manure, the proprietorship of a small holding may 
prove a good and paying business. But to suggest peasant 
proprietorship as a means of improving the condition of the 
Northumbrian agricultural labourer — as a means of restoring the 
picturesque and much-regretted yeoman, who has been simply 
flattened out by the pressure of economic forces — is to suggest 
a remedy which is founded on nothing better than ignorance 
and folly. 
It is an economic truth, not less, but more, indisputable in 
these days of improved machinery than in the days when Arthur 
Young and McCuIloch demonstrated the superiority of large over 
small holdings for the puqioses of profitable farming, that the 
chances of profit rise in proportion to the size of a farm, its 
size being regulated (1) by the amount of available capital that 
can be obtained ; (2) by the amount of land which an individual 
can manage in the best and most approved manner. 
This being admitted — and it cannot be denied — it remains 
for us to consider whether the potentialities which lie dor- 
mant in the successful application of the profit-sharing svstem 
to agriculture do not offer a better hope to the agi-icultural 
labourer than anything which the State can be invited to do for 
him. 
Once it is admitted that large holdings yield greater profits 
than small ones, the object of the agricultural reformer should 
be to devise some plan which unites the advantages of the two 
systems — some plan which is able to secure not only the 
division of labour, the use of new and expensive machinery, 
and the command of abundant capital, which can only be 
obtained on large holdings, but the eflScient individual labour, 
which, on peasant proprietorships has, according to Ai-thur 
Young, the power of transforming sand into gold. 
It may be well to consider, before we proceed further, what 
is implied by the term " profit-sharing " which Mr. Balfour puts 
before us as an ideal to be aimed at.* 
' " One method, and one method alone, appears to me to exist by which 
all the benefits that i>eople hope for from peasant proprietorship, and all the 
advantages which are actually obtained by the system of large cnltivation, 
might be united. Only would this be possible" if agriculture could be managed on 
something like a co-operative system. The problem of our country districts 
would, 1 believe, be solved if only we could associate the labourer with the 
farmer. If only we could make them all sharers in the profits, as they are 
