6 The Place of the Small Holder in English Agriculture . 
departure is made, and try to see what is the exact place of 
the small holder to-day in English agriculture, and how far it 
differs from that which we find elsewhere. 
The latest Committee lay before us the bare facts which 
our agricultural returns now tell us, but, having regard to their 
reference, they could not be expected to discuss in any detail 
the statistical bearing of the figures. It would need a very 
exhaustive and laborious analysis of the existing statistics we 
possess in this country to discover what are the crops a small 
holder on all the soils of a country like ours, and with prices 
where they are, may most hopefully grow if he is to flourish 
and not to fail. 
For such an inquiry there would have to be a new and 
minute local analysis of the occupiers’ schedules in the lower 
grades of holdings, and such a search might be a long and 
costly business. Nevertheless it would be interesting to know 
something more, in extension of the 1895 returns, as to the 
prevalence of one or other form of agriculture in holdings 
under fiftv acres ; the relative number on which wheat is 
grown ; what are the total numbers of these holdings devoted 
in whole or in part to potatoes, to small fruit, and so on ; 
and, if the figures could be got, not only for cultivated areas, 
but for land farmed of whatever character, what stock was 
raised and kept on the smaller units of our system. The 
returns of 1885, which preceded the 1895 investigation, were 
ambitious on this last point, but failed in accuracy owing to 
the narrowed scope of the cultivated area. 
It is well known that the old category of market gardens 
has lost its meaning, and that special vegetable crops for sale 
are reared in many ordinary farms that are by no means 
of merely “ garden ” dimensions. Even much wider topics 
would be germane to such an inquiry : as with regard to the 
class of cultivator on existing small holdings, the help he gets 
on his holding from his own family, or the hired labour — 
permanent or temporary — he may still require for effective 
husbandry. But to do this not by merely casual type, but on 
a thoughtful and balanced statistical system, would probably 
involve an extension of our population census in an unfamiliar 
direction, but one that is already pursued in some of the 
enumerations of foreign countries. 
Sometimes it has been tried to give the effect of such an 
investigation by quoting the experience or the balance sheets, 
where these exist, of individual occupiers. But the practice is 
not a very commendable one, and although one looks for, and 
may find in the evidence tendered to a Committee, instances 
both of successful and of unsuccessful ventures — and these 
deserve and receive attention — it is a dangerous practice to 
