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JOURNAL 
OF THE 
ROYAL AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY 
OF ENGLAND. 
THE PLACE OF THE SMALL HOLDER IN 
ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 
The Royal Agricultural Society has on many occasions opened 
the pages of its Journal to a discussion of one phase or 
another of the small holdings problem. The proper and most 
profitable size of an area of agricultural management is a theme 
not unfitting for debate by practical men who can appreciate, 
more than either their political or theoretical advisers, the 
multitude of conflicting factors and conditions which, prescribe 
and determine the most effective scope for the cultivation of 
the soil under the varying conditions it presents in a country 
like our own. A new inquiry into the feasibility of stimu- 
lating by some further measures, legislative or other, the 
provision of more numerous units of cultivation in England 
has been attracting notice, and cannot be overlooked as regards 
its practical side by those who can study British agriculture 
from the inside. 
Although there is no longer a jealousy of the small holder 
among the most enlightened of our larger agriculturists, 
those who know most of the business of land management and 
the practice of economic production will not be carried away 
by the recurrent waves of sentiment or the gusts of theoretical 
opinion on this subject. They may nevertheless accept the 
dictates of what, for want of a better term, is known as 
political expediency, so that there is now more general agree- 
ment than was evident over a large portion of the nineteenth 
century that, under the agricultural conditions of the day, 
more room may be found for intensive farming, if the proper 
places and the fitting circumstances can only be secured. And 
VOL. 67. B 
