Page:The Economic Journal Volume 1.djvu/152

132 peasant proprietary is not incompatible with differential advantages in the cultivation of land, although the peasant may pay a rent to himself and not to another man. The chief difficulty of applying the theory to the case of peasant proprietors seem rather to arise from another source. They do not always cultivate with a single eye to the sale of the produce in the market. They may intend to consume part of that produce themselves, and they may then be content to cultivate at a cost, which they would not incur, if they regarded only the realisation of a profit in the market. They are so far uninfluenced by the competition with rival producers, which stimulates to improvement and checks misdirected energy; and often also they are not entirely dependent for their income on the sale of their farm produce. They, or their wives and their children, may be partly engaged in some other employment. They may even regard the cultivation of their land in some cases as secondary in importance to the main occupation of their lives, and they may then again be content to produce at a loss.

The importance of a second occupation has been lately illustrated by the Highland crofters, who have sometimes added the business of fishing to that of farming. In such cases it is theoretically possible that rents fixed by competitive bargaining may yet vary from a true measure of differential advantage. Higher rents may conceivably be offered than would arise from a single regard to the productive powers of the land and the income accruing from the sale of its produce. The second occupation may be of primary importance; and, even if it is subsidiary, as in the case of the crofters, a sudden failure or unexpected disaster in their fishing ventures may render them not merely unwilling, but unable, to pay a rent, which was fixed with the prospect of securing some part of their income from this subsidiary source. Such cases of by-industries are undoubtedly very complex and difficult when viewed from a theoretical standpoint.

There is another aspect from which the assumption of competition may be considered in the case of small cultivators. We have already seen that this assumption implies that tenants can carry their wares and services to the best market, and that the Agricultural Holdings Acts may be treated as a recognition of their inability to remove their unexhausted improvements. We have now to add the consideration that in some cases they may not be able to remove their own persons. The conditions, indeed, of mobility of capital and labour, which are necessary to justify the assumption of a correspondence between the effort and expenditure of different employments and their rewards, require to be