82 
Report on tlie Agriculture of Belijium. 
districts in search of work, and get it : and in three months the 
rate of wages in the newly opened district will have risen 20 
per cent. This is not the case in the northern part of Flanders, 
lor there you can hardly induce a man to leave his native commune. 
The consequence is that there one sees a dense agricultural popu- 
lation, low wages, and poor living ; and nearly the whole produce 
of the soil is consumed by those who are employed in obtaining it 
Of course, if the only employment for a large mass of the popu- 
lation is the cultivation of the land, a large-farm system is im- 
possible ; but such a state of things is, in a civilized country, a 
political and commercial disease. 
The most primitive condition of a country is that in which 
the population is evenly distributed, where there are neither 
towns nor villages, and where every family has to supply its 
own wants. The most advanced condition of a country is where 
the distributed population is no more than sufficient to till the 
land, and the remainder is congregated in centres of manufacture 
and commerce. In the latter we have division of labour, where 
the tiller of the soil feeds the man who clothes him, and so on 
through the endless labyrinth of interdependency which is formed 
by civilization ; this condition must be co-existent with a system 
of large farms. 
The small-farm system of Flanders, on the contrary, necessi- 
tates the employment of a large number of people on a relatively 
small area, and consequently at very low wages. We have 
endeavoured to show that this fact retards the natural increase in 
the prosperity of the country ; and this consideration has, in fact, 
been brought home to some of the more instructed men in 
Belgium. M. Jacquemyns, President of the Agricultural Society , 
of East Flanders, in speaking of the relatively large amount of 
manual labour required on their small-farm system, says "Twenty 
years ago this was its great merit, now it is its great defect." * 
This is because manufacturing industries and public works now 
require a constantly increasing number of workmen at higher 
wages than those of an agricultural labourer ; and while this 
increase in his income benefits the individual, the result of his 
work is a benefit to the nation. The authorities of the State 
Agricultural College at Gembloux have also stated in their 
'Bulletin,' p. 191, that "under equal conditions large farms have 
over small ones all the advantages which manufacturers on a 
large possess over those on a small scale." 
The inherent proclivities of different races should not, 
however, be forgotten. The Flemish, for instance, are naturally 
* M. Leclerc observes that " labour in the rural districts of Belgium is 
becoming more and more scarce, owing to the great development of manufactures. 
The insufficiency of labour is compensated for by tlie use of machines." This is 
obviously impossible on small farms. 
