The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-08-22 00:00:00

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SATURDAY, AUG. 22, 1874.

was twice as productive as that of the large farmer's In his
neighl.urhood. The result of all this deserves to be recorded
and remembered. At the best of Units his net earnings
wi-re ali.ait five shillings a week, find at bad tines his
operati ii.. Oe conducted at a loss which to most non
in his position is mild have beim nothing less than
ruinous The calculation our Reporter has given sets
no value oat the labour 'bestowed, nor dims it state a
net product after the cost .of living bud been defrayed. It
gives simply the entire profit that remained over wi.en the
expeos,.. of farming had been cleared, and it proves that the
cotter ill Iptestion, with art infinite amount of trouble and
at no little risk of loss, obtained, as the reward of hi:, own
and his wife's exertions, something less than a third par t if
ci hat he would himself have received as a certainty if he had
been working under MI employer. If these were fair sample
(Acta, they would not even be an encouraging. But the con-
ditions of the case, it is clear, were far more favourable than
could generally be secured, and the result was an almost
total failure.

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The advocates of Peasant Farming in England should be
prepartd to meet such instances as these, and to explain
away the conclusions to which they inevitably lead. Until
they do. they must not hope to convince any but their leas
instructed hearers, whose prejudices will probably be proof
against a good deal of disillusion. It is true, indeed, that
the trial in the instance we have cited was made probably on
somewhat too small a scale, and that with an additional nine
acres Or so similarly cultivated the holder might have been
more sucistssful. This adintssion, however, does not really
much affect the merits of the case, nor alter the lesson
it may be made to teach. If small holdings once
became the rule in England: it is far more likely
that they wbuld diminish in size than that they
would have any tendency to increase. Each generation
would see them more and mom subdivided. and the labour
bestowed upon them would become, accordingly, continually
less remunerative. It is difficult to make mt exactly what
our ratio labourers really earn as wages, but we shall be well
within the mark in assuming that they would in Horace be
Whined with the miserable pittance which mocked the in-
telligent industry of the East Anglian cottier whom we have
described. As long as Mr. Arch and his party confine them-
selves to asserting that it is possible to grow more corn in
England than is grown by our present cultivators, they are,
of course, on strong ground, and may be taken to have esta-
blished their point But to have done this is very far from suf-
ficient for their purpose. They ought to show not only that
it Ls possible to increase the returns I rom land, but that it is
economically desirable to do no. If they cannot succeed in
this, their scheme, after all, comes to nothing According
to our present plan, we grow for ourselves as much food as
we can grow with advantage, and if mere food is needed we
do not therefore set about taking new and poorer land
into cultivation, nor do we employ m..re labour upon the
old land with lower comparative profit. The development
of modern commerce has enabled ns to have our corn
grOWII for us elsewhere, where it can be raised with most
ease, and we obtain all we want in exchange for our
manufactures or for anything else we have to offer.
This principle is so elementary and so obviously correct,
that it would be scarcely necessary to noilit it out,
were it not that we listen almost every day to declamatory
speeches in which it is contradicted or ignored. In whose
interest, we would ask, is it that a principle we have aban-
&mini everywhere else is to be introduced anew into agri-
culture ? What advantage could it be to add to the gross
produce of corn by a costly method which would leave the
net 'return* considerably less than they are now? Tile
public clearly could gain nothing by the change, and if we
look to the interest of the labourers employed our conclu-
sion will be much the same.

We have seen the result of a small holding of good corn
laud under circumstances most likely to favour it. What
would it be if our labourers were to set to work upon a far
less remunerative task— the over-cultivation of inferior land
or the reclamation of wastes which are now not cultivated at
all The one possible benefit would be that the country might
maintain a larger number of inhabitants, but it would main.
min them notch less comfortably than it does now, and. in
spite of names, the men would be less independent than when
they were at work for hire. Small farming is a thing of the
past, and haa been supplanted and driven out by another
system, better suited to present circuimtances. Modern
farming, it it is to be successful, implies a great deal
which is impossible with small holdings. The division of
labour, which in its many forms is the first spring of modern
industry, is only possible where the field of labour is of ex-
tent sufncient to permit it and much which can be done
with advantage where hundreds or thousands of acres are
in question could not be done at all on the tens or units of
acres which Mr. Arch ant his fellow agitators would portion
out. 'fhere is one plan, and one only, by which the result
aimed at could be reached without any corresponding draw-
back. It is both possible and desirable, as our reporter has
elsewhere shown, that large land-holders should supplement
their men's wages by granting them small holdings, to be culti-
vated at odd tunes in the necessary intervalsof steer and more
important work The labour expended upon these would
not, it is true, bring in its full equivalent, but it would,
even so, be bestowed willingly, and could not be considered
to be spent in vain, for it would he the alternative, not of
more profitable labour, but of simple and entire idleness. In
this way the cultivation of large farms and of little
plots of ground might go on amicably side by side, and
each would lend assistance to the other. But to substi-
tute small farms for large ones, or to make labourers
I as a class dependent upon the produce of their own
little piece of ground, would be simply to turn back
the course of events, and to surrender gratuitously the
results of past experience. There would ha as much reason
In an argument for hand-loom weaving or stocking-making,
either of which may still occupy an idle hand or an odd hour,
but could scarcely be put forward as likely to win back the
ground from which they have been driven and to supersede
the employment of machinery and of large capitals Stage
coachmen. too. have their advocates. They are resusci-
tated from time to time and set up against engine-drivers,
but the opposition has scarcely been successful. The
root of these and of all similar endeavours Is to be found,
we believe, not in reason of calculation, but in what
we will take leave to call false sentiment. This has, no
doubt, a place in life from which it cannot be dislodged, and
it may be indulged in at all times as a luxury by those who
can afford to pay for it. The question before us has been,
however, far too severely prosaic to be thus fancifully
settled, the more so as true romance is not easily dissociated
fronl reality, and a romince of family life on five shillings a
week is pretty certain to be ruthlessly dissipated by its hard.
ships.