Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/447

Rh AGEICULTUEE 411 CHAPTER XXI. LARGE AND SMALL FARMING. leases No treatise on agriculture will in these days be con sidered complete which does not take note of some of the various modes in which the treatment of the soil may be affected by variations in the cultivating occupier s form of tenure. A farm may be the property of its occupier, or be held by him at will or on lease. According to its extent it will be the subject of grande or of petite culture, expressions which in the following pages will be Anglicised as large and small culture or fanning. If a farm be of small size, and if its occupant be also its owner, peasant proprietorship comes into play. If it be let, its rent may consist of a payment of predetermined amount in money or in kind, or may, instead of a fixed portion, be a pre determined proportion of the annual produce. It may be let to one individual, singly responsible for the rent and for all imposts, fiscal or other, and exclusively entitled to the whole of the remaining net produce; or it may be held in common by any number of coparceners, all co-operating in the cultivation, and jointly and severally responsible for the rent and other dues, and all participating in the net profits. Each of these systems has its advocates, and of one of them, at least, the admirers are so much enamoured as to be unable to perceive merit in any of the rest. A judgment upon them that would be generally acceptable is therefore impossible, and need not be attempted here. Nothing more will be aimed at than such an impartial estimate of the advantages and disadvantages of each as may help an unbiassed reader to judge for himself. Tenancies I. In regard to tenancy at will and to leases, little at will and need be added to the observations made in previous chapters of this article. For the consideration, how ever, of those who insist on the undoubted fact that in Great Britain, where tenancy at will is still the rule, and leases as yet only the exception, the same families, although liable to be ousted at six months notice, are nevertheless often found occupying the same land from generation to generation, the following may be suggested as a not improbable explanation of the landlord s non- exercise of the power of eviction. It may perhaps be not so much that the farmers really confound past continuity with future permanency of tenure, as that their want of security for the future prevents their investing liberally in improvements, and thereby bringing the land into a con dition calculated to attract higher bidders for its possession. Such increase as does take place in its lettable value is chiefly due to enhancement of the prices of produce; and to a rise of rent proportionate to such enhancement the old tenants readily submit rather than be removed. The principal loser here is the landlord, whose short-sighted policy deters his tenants from a species of enterprise the benefit of which would eventually become principally his own. If the tenants took the trouble to make the com parison, they might, it is true, deliberately prefer the mere chance of a long series of years at a low rent to the cer tainty of the same low rent for a limited term, coupled with the nearly equal certainty of a rise of rent at the end of the term. Their gains in the former case, they might argue, however meagre, might at least be easily earned; whereas materially to increase them in the latter case, although perhaps possible, would be possible only at the expense of much anxiety of mind as well as of much extra sweat of the brow. II. Of grande culture, or large farming, it may perhaps be thought almost superfluous here to enumerate the recom mendations, which indeed on one condition are obvious and incontrovertible. Provided a large farmer ba possessed of Large. Carmine capital duly proportioned to the extent of his holding, and of intelligence to employ his capital judiciously, his husbandry can scarcely fail to prove abundantly satisfactory. In a territory entirely parcelled out among farmers of this de scription there would, from a purely agricultural point of view, seem little left to desire. The system certainly ap proaches towards the realisation of the great object of all agriculture that of the production of the greatest pos sible quantity and the best possible quality of raw material for the use of man. The distinguishing characteristic of large culture is the scope it affords for the appli cation to husbandry of the great principle of division of labour. A well-managed large farm is indeed a factory for the production of vegetable and animal substance. The extensive scale on which operations are there carried on necessitates the employment of several persons, to each of whom some special occupation may be assigned, and constant practice naturally increases the labourer s skill. Time, too, is saved which would otherwise be lost in turning frequently from one occupation to another; and there is also a further saving in implements, large and small, and in draught cattle, fewer of which will suffice for the tillage of a given area held entire than would be needed if the same acreage were divided amongst numerous tenants. Some, again, of the more important of agricultural operations, and notably those of drainage and irrigation, are in many situations incapable of being efficiently performed except on a large scale ; and though they may be, and often are, most efficiently performed on the very largest scale by a combination of small land holders, still every such combination must necessarily be preceded by negotiations involving indefinitely pro longed delay, with which a single individual, occupying the entire tract, could at his option dispense. And a similar remark applies to the costlier implements and machines, in the adoption of which associations of small farmers may slowly follow the example of individual large farmers, but which they would not, without such example, have themselves adopted which, indeed, unless previ ously patronised by large farmers, would never have been offered for their adoption. Probably no inventive genius, however disinterestedly ardent, would have been at the pains to devise a steam thrashing-machine or a steam plough, had there not been wealthy agriculturists, some of whom might readily be persuaded to risk, at their own cost and charges, an immediate trial of any promising invention. Farmers of limited means, even when living in the same neighbourhood, would have to be educated into faith in the novel apparatus before the inventor would get a single specimen taken off his hands. Besides, wherever large fanning prevails, large properties are its invariable concomitants ; and wherever it is the fashion for pro prietors to reside on their estates, many of them are sure to amuse themselves with fanning. Very likely, if they were to count the cost, they might find the amusement an expensive one. Not im possibly they often spend on the land as much as they get back from it, or even more, the expenditure in that case at best producing only its bare equivalent. But the same expenditure, unless so applied, would as likely as not have remained utterly unproductive, being devoted to some other amusement, or to mere parade 01 luxury, from which no tangible return whatever would be possible ; so that its application to agricultural extravagance is virtually a gain, in the sense, at all events, of preventing total loss. Nor in that sense only ; for rich men who take to fanning as a pastime are precisely those most likely to be forward in putting new inventions and new processes to the test of experiment ; while the experience thereby acquired, instead of being jealously concealed, is liberally published far and wide, so becoming the property of the whole, body of farmers by profession, and serving thorn, according to circntn