TABLE XI.-Area and Number of Belgian Holdings in Provinces, their Occupation by Owners or Tenants, and the Proportion of Agricultural Workers.

DISCUSSION on MAJOR CRAIGIE'S PAPER.

BEFORE the paper was read

The CHAIRMAN, Lionel L. Cohen, Esq., M.P., said he had the pleasure to announce, and the Society was greatly indebted for the announcement to his friend Sir Rawson Rawson, that the Society was now a chartered society, and they were entitled to call themselves the Royal Statistical Society of Great Britain. He was sure the members would be gratified at this announcement he was empowered to make, that they had now become the Royal Statistical Society, and were entitled to put that heading to all their public acts.

(The Paper was then read.)

Mr. S. B. L. DRUCE said that they owed a very deep debt of gratitude to Major Craigie, for the very elaborate and detailed statistics that he had placed before them on this very intricate subject. He had himself at different times devoted some attention to the subject of large and small holdings in Great Britain, and the conclusions to which the author had arrived were so entirely in unison with his own, that it was almost impossible for him to criticise the paper. In these days, when there was so much talk of the value of small ownerships, and small farms, and so much said on so many platforms to the effect that the system of agriculture in England was entirely that of large farms, especial stress should be laid upon the fact, which the author had brought out so clearly, that the average size of a holding in England was 60 acres. When he (the speaker) first studied this subject some few years ago, upon the statistics available before the 1886 returns, he was astonished to find that the average at that time was 57 acres, and he was even more astonished now to find, considering the bad times, from which all who were connected with agriculture had suffered during the last ten years, that, as the author had demonstrated, the tendency of English farms during that period had been to increase in size rather than to diminish. That was, he thought, quite contrary to the generally received opinion of land agents, farmers, and other persons, who were doubtless, in a general way, well versed in rural affairs, but who had not studied them from a statistical point of view. Here came out the great value of a statistical society, because it corrected those ideas which otherwise became prevalent and took hold of the public mind. They had of late years heard a great deal about allotments, and there had been, he thought, much confusion between small farms or ownerships, and allotments properly so called. By an "allotment" he understood a small piece of land which could be cultivated by a labourer or other person in his spare hours, and

which was in fact, in most instances, hardly more than a garden. He had stated in his report to the Royal Commission, with reference to the fifteen counties entrusted to him to report upon, not the actual number of allotments in those counties, but the fact whether allotments were general, few, or otherwise; and those statements very much tallied with the results which appeared in the last allotment returns to which the author alluded. Allotments were more numerous in the midland, or rather in the eastern midland counties; but that fact appeared to him to arise not so much from the geographical position of those counties, as from the fact that the agriculture in them was strictly arable, and not pasture. Where the land was mainly arable, there they would find allotments predominate; where, on the contrary, there was not much arable land, but grass, and hills, they would find very few allotments. That seemed to be the reason of the greater or less number of allotments, and he was inclined to put it on that ground rather than upon the ground of the difference in agricultural wages, as Major Craigie appeared to have done. Looking through the ten counties respectively tabulated by Major Craigie, his (the speaker's) theory of the arable land and pasture would, he ventured to think, hold quite as strongly and as well as that advanced by the author. For instance, in Bedfordshire, which was almost entirely an arable county, they found the greatest number of allotments. Warwickshire, Wiltshire, Bucks, Oxford, Berkshire, and Cambridgeshire were all arable counties, and in them allotments predominated. On the other hand, in Westmoreland, Cumberland, Monmouthshire, Cornwall, and other counties, all of which were pasture or grass counties, they found but few allotments. As the rates of wages given by the author in this table were his (Mr. Druce's), worked out from the reports to the Royal Commission, he wished to state that they were all of them money wages and nothing else. They did not by any means represent all that the agricultural labourer received for his labour. On the contrary, he usually received other remuneration in addition. For example, the allotments themselves were, in many instances, given to the labourers free, as appeared from the allotment returns, in which the number of allotments held without payment of any rent appears to be very considerable. Many other allotments also were let at very moderate rents. Other labourers had cottages at moderate rents, and in some instances free. In other parts of the country the old system of the labourers boarding with the bailiff or head man on the farm still prevailed, and in such cases the labourers were allowed (somewhat after the Swedish fashion mentioned by Major Craigie) certain quantities of either corn, potatoes, or bacon, payment in kind in fact, in addition to actual money wages. He wished to point that out for fear that the idea should go forth that those figures represented the whole of the remuneration which the agricultural labourer received. With reference to the class of men who succeeded as peasant proprietors, or small farmers, he thought the author had hit the right nail on the head when he said they must not only be suitable men, but that those men must also have suitable wives. It was really

the suitable wife that made the peasant proprietor or small farmer the successful man. If she was able and willing to work, in nine cases out of ten the man would succeed; if she was not, then in nine cases out of ten the man would fail.

Lord ONSLOW said he had read the paper with great interest. The remarks which the author had made as to the sizes of the holdings in various counties in England were entirely borne out by the facts which had come under his own notice. He observed with very great pleasure that the author agreed with him in the belief that the system of allotments existed in the midland counties already to a very great extent, and there was very little demand for more He quite agreed with what had fallen both from the author and Mr. Druce that the low price of agricultural produce generally had caused a very large number of the small holdings and allotments which were under cultivation at the time when Mr. Druce was acting upon the Agricultural Commission and when the statistics from which Major Craigie drew his inferences were compiled, to be thrown back into the hands of the owners. He was satisfied from what had reached him from a great many sources, that so far from there being any lack of disposition on the part of those who owned land to let it in allotments, or even in small holdings, the landlords were most anxious to have upon their estates holdings of every size and class. It was a well known fact that landlords at the present moment had upon their hands a very large acreage of land which they would only be too pleased to get rid of either in large or small holdings. One point which had not been very clearly brought out in the paper was as to the difference between small holdings of pasture and small holdings of arable land. He should like to have seen a table showing how far the small holdings to which he had alluded were cultivated and arable, and how far they remained as pasture. He believed there was room, certainly in those districts of England in which dairy farming was extensively practised, for a considerable increase of small holdings. It was an acknowledged fact that in England, of all countries, the labourer and the artisan derived less advantages from the milk of cows than was the case in any other country of Europe. He hoped that if there was to be any advance in the direction of cutting up land in small holdings, it would be in the way of providing small holdings of pasture and not small holdings of arable, in order that the children of the artisan and labourer might have that which was most essential for their proper nourishment-a good and proper supply of milk. One point must not be lost sight of, viz., that it was not every man, nor indeed every woman, who was capable of managing a small dairy holding, but in those counties in which dairying was an art, and where it was thoroughly and carefully practised, he felt certain that there would be room, especially in the neighbourhood of large towns, for a considerable extension of the system which had been broadly, and perhaps rather unwisely, called the cow and the three acres.

Mr. W. J. HARRIS, after remarking on the opportuneness of the

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paper, said that he believed that the number of small holdings or allotments were still understated by the Government returns. One class of holdings he believed had not been fully taken into account, viz., the potato grounds which farmers gave to their labourers. On one of his farms in Devonshire, employing about sixteen men, at least twelve of the men had land given them for growing potatoes-all his neighbours did the same-the horse labour being done by the farmer, and the labourer simply providing seed potatoes and manure. That was one of the most advantageous modes in which allotments could be given to a labourer, because he received all the advantage of the produce without having to do so much of the work. He did not think these sort of holdings had been included in agricultural returns. (Mr. DRUCE said he believed these potato grounds were included.) Mr. HARRIS said that neither himself nor his bailiff had ever been asked any questions about them, and therefore if the returns were made to the Government they must have been guessed at. Since holding land in Devonshire, he had let a good many small enclosures of pasture to the cottagers, and he could thoroughly confirm what had been said by the author and by Lord Onslow, that for the man to prosper he must not only be a man suitable for the work, but he must have a suitable wife as well. No doubt Irish experience went very much against the system of small holdings, but their want of success was owing to the fact that the men had not got the opportunity of earning wages as well. If they could earn the same wages as labourers did even in the poorer parts of England, say 128. to 148. a week, he believed there would be no Irish question at all. The smallest acreage in this country which a man could farm and live upon with a family without wages could not be put at less than forty acres of land, average quality. He had a few farms of that size on which men could and did live; they were thrifty men and lived happily; but if the farms were smaller, he did not believe they could make both ends meet unless they could earn wages besides. It was these men who had suffered less than larger farmers in these times of depression, simply because the fall had only affected the small surplus they had to sell and not what they lived upon. The reason why the small holdings in Belgium were fairly successful was that the whole of Belgium existed over a great coal or iron mine, and the small farmers had other work to do and other wages to earn.

Mr. R. JASPER MORE, M.P., having made some remarks,

Mr. STEPHEN BOURNE, speaking from his own experience in Jamaica, stated that under the former system of slavery the labourers practically raised all the vegetable food which they consumed, having the run of what was termed the mountain land and so much time apportioned to them which they were expected to employ on that land. When they became freemen the proprietors repudiated the system of giving them the free run of the land, and the result was that many of these men thought it would be a fine thing to become purchasers or renters of small