This narrows down the peasant-proprietor theory vastly in its practical application; it remains hardly a national question. But I have been astonished to see in the neighbourhood of London of late years the large "gentleman" market-gardeners steadily displacing the smaller and all the single-handed men. The subject is so important that I will take one of two instances in detail. I have seen a gentleman market-gardener, eight miles or so from Covent Garden, growing strawberries, several acres in each patch. He had young men (a separate staff) out at daybreak to keep the birds off. The small gardener, growing a few long beds of strawberries, is ruined by the birds, whether he lets them eat or goes into the expense and labour of netting. The gentleman has his own large spring-vans waiting; these vans are fitted for fruit, and as the pickers gather the strawberries they deliver them in small and frequent parcels to the packers. The moment the first van is laden it starts at three miles per hour and travels to Covent Garden itself, where the strawberries are delivered to the fruit-dealer, who buys them wholesale of the gentleman-gardener. The small grower has to get his strawberries to the local railway station, and to arrange to get them from the London terminus to market; his trouble and expense are considerable; but, more important still, his strawberries do not come into the hands of the wholesale dealer in the "condition" that the large grower's do. This large grower admitted that he was paying £12 an acre per annum for some of his land; he added, "My labour per acre, and even my manure per acre, costs so much that I do not think about a few pounds rent more or less." These gentleman-gardeners are on the average better educated than the small market-gardeners; they travel about the country, gather hints, and pick up new good varieties of strawberries, etc. From their scale of operations and varied sorts of strawberries they can, even in rough wet weather or in drought, always supply to their wholesale dealer some fruit. In fine, they beat the small grower at every point; they undersell him at Covent Garden; they outbid him for desirable garden-land within reach of London. It may be said that in growing plain vegetables the small gardener would not be at such a disadvantage. I will reply (without detailing all my observations) that I have seen the same gentleman-gardener growing a two-acre plot of early radishes, and that he completely spoilt early radishes for all the small gardeners.
The advocates of peasant-proprietors have thought cowkeeping hopeful for small men. In my experience dairies of fifty or sixty cows have an enormous advantage; they can have perfectly designed dairies; they have enough cream to make butter daily throughout the year (which saves much trouble, loss, and occasionally inferior butter); they can maintain approximately a uniform supply. In short, they beat, undersell, and displace the small cowkeepers wherever the large dairy is moderately well managed.
The cottager or peasant-proprietor has, I believe, an advantage in poultry of all kinds. When poultry are kept in very large numbers they are more liable to disease, and the diseases are more disastrous—sweeping off the whole large stock. Fowl and egg farming is one of the most successful, perhaps the most successful point with the French peasant-proprietors. To make birdfarming successful the proper plan is to keep a moderate number of as many birds as possible—fowls, "galeenies," ducks, geese, turkeys, large pigeons—and to go in for eggs as well as fowls. I have not seen peasant-proprietors in England attempting this, which seems to me one of the most hopeful of experiments for them.
The second point urged by Mill, and still by some, is that peasant-proprietors are better off than English labourers. With the present price of agricultural labour in England this seems to be very generally not the case; the French peasant-proprietors and the agricultural lower classes in Germany are (with small exceptions) now worse off than the English farm-labourer; they work very much harder and they get less to eat. The economic truth doubtless is that the hired labourer may or may not be better off than the peasant-proprietor, according to circumstances; and circumstances in England just now are in favour of the hired labourer.
Then as to independence, it may fairly be questioned whether a good agricultural workman, now practically liberated from the Law of Settlement, and who can command a fair wage anywhere, is not really more independent than a French peasant absolutely tied to a three-acre plot for life.
The real difference between the advocates of the nationalisation of the land and the Conservatives is this. The Conservative says, "Leave everything to its natural course, and let us have no Government interference. If the peasant-proprietor really can maintain himself while paying as high a rent as the ordinary farmer, we shall soon have plenty of them." Or, the Conservative has no objection to a philanthropist starting a few picked peasant-proprietors as an experiment. But he objects to starting any gigantic new scheme of working the land, except as a matter of business; he objects to Government philanthropy, which means giving away other people's money.
Our farm-labourers, as a rule, know nothing of gardening, and few of them can command £10 capital. I have sometimes looked round to select a picked man, and wondered whether, if I put him in a selected five-acre plot near a town, and also lent him the £200 or so capital requisite to give him a chance, this picked agricultural labourer would succeed; and I have inclined to think he would not succeed. I need not therefore express any opinion as to what would happen if Government were to take 10,000 or 100,000 farm-labourers, advance them £200 each, and place them in five-acre or ten-acre plots: there would be a tremendous bill to pay, and the plan of peasant-proprietors would be put aside for many a day. If the plan is to be successful it must be introduced gradually and in a business manner, i.e. what does not pay must not be persisted in.
The plan, now frequently put forward, that Government is to employ all men out of work to reclaim and bring into cultivation waste lands, is liable to additional objections. Who is to fix the wages, the hours of labour, and the tale of work for the Government labourers? If these were fixed as the advocates of the plan wish them fixed, Government would soon have all the labourers of the country in its employ. If, on the other hand, these were fixed below the market rate, Government would only have such labour as the Poor-Law Unions now have, and which they find hardly worth employing.
Leaving this (practically grave) difficulty aside, if a heath or a moor is now uncultivated it is because nobody sees how it can be profitably brought into cultivation; it can always at a sufficient outlay be reclaimed, but that will not be done unless it is calculated that the rent of the land when reclaimed will pay the interest on the whole expense of reclamation, and something besides. If Government reclaims land that private persons cannot reclaim with profit, we may be sure that Government will suffer a considerable loss. This must be provided out of taxes: are the promoters of reclamation of wastes by Government prepared for this?
The wastes of England are the only land left the public. Elsewhere the public can only walk along a pavement or a high road. The good land is all pretty well in cultivation; and the best of what is left can give but a moderate profit on reclamation, while its enclosure, under Act of Parliament, deprives the public of it for ever. Hence Professor H. Fawcett, throughout his parliamentary career, put his veto with great success on all enclosure schemes. It is possible that there might be a profit on the enclosure of Epping Forest: who will now support that reclamation?