These figures must of course be approximate. The effect of recent development in methods of travelling and the growing custom for townsmen either to live wholly in the country or to take week-end cottages, has made it impossible to draw a strict line of demarcation between rural and urban populations. Still they are near enough for practical purposes, and they amply justify the efforts of those who are trying to stay the rural exodus.
While legislation had not, up to 1908, achieved any noteworthy result in the creation of small holdings, and still left doubts as to the practicability of re-creating the English yeoman by act of parliament, many successful efforts have been made by individuals. One of the most interesting is that of the earl of Carrington at Sleaford in Lincolnshire. In this case the most noteworthy feature is that between the landlord and the tenants there is a body called the South Lincolnshire Small Holdings Association, which took 650 acres from Lord Carrington on a twenty years’ lease. These acres used to be let to four or five tenants. They were in 1905 divided among one hundred and seventy tenants. The Small Holders’ Association guaranteed the rent, which works out at about 33s. per acre, to Lord Carrington. They let the men on yearly tenancy have it at about 40s. an acre, the difference being used to meet the expenses of dividing the lands into small holdings, maintaining drains, fences and roads connected with them, and other unavoidable outlays. In this way the landlord is assured of his rent, and the association has lost nothing, as the men were very punctual in their payments. But very great care was bestowed in choosing the men for the holdings. They were in a sense picked men, but men must be picked to work the business satisfactorily. Lincolnshire is preeminently a county of small holdings, and the labouring residents in it have been accustomed to the management of them from their infancy onwards. Here as elsewhere the provision of suitable houses formed a difficulty, some of the tenants having to walk several miles to their holdings. Lord Carrington availed himself as much as possible of the buildings that existed, dividing the old farm houses so as to make them suitable for the small tenants. At Cowbit farm, many of the ordinary labourers cottages, which were put up at a cost of about £300 a pair, have by the addition of little dairies and other alterations been made suitable for the tenants. From facts collected on the spot we have come to the conclusion that on the small holdings a good tenant makes an average profit of about £4 an acre, but on an allotment cultivated by means of the spade it would probably be at the rate of over £6 an acre. Lord Carrington was also successful in establishing small holdings on the Humberston estate in North Lincolnshire and on his Buckinghamshire estate, near Aylesbury. At Newport Pagnell the attempt failed because the demand was artificial, the ground arable, and the men not capable of dealing with it.
Other examples of the establishment of small holdings can only receive brief reference. The Norfolk Small Holdings Association acquired three farms at Whissonsett, Watton and Swaffham, which are broken up into small lots and let mostly to the village tradespeople. Sir Pearce Edgecumbe established small holdings at Rew, some of which have been purchased by the occupiers, and Mr A. B. Markham created similar ownerships at Twyford (Leicestershire). At Cudworth in Surrey a group was formed, but the owners were actuated more by the desire to lead a simple life than to prove the remunerative value of small holdings. Mr W. J. Harris created small holdings in Devon, each of which is let on a life tenancy. There the rural exodus has been more than arrested. Mr James Tomkinson established in Cheshire a number of graduated holdings, so contrived as to offer the successful holders a chance of stepping upwards.
The earl of Harrowby made an interesting experiment on his Sandon estate in Staffordshire in the midst of a pretty, broken and undulating country. The estate consists of about 6000 acres, one-third of which is laid out in small holdings. These fall naturally into three divisions. First, there are those which belong to men who have regular employment, and would therefore find it impossible to cultivate any great quantity of land. Many of that class are anxious to have a holding of some sort, as it lends a certain elasticity to their incomes and provides them with a never-failing interest. One who may be taken as typical hired six acres with a good cottage and a large garden, paying a rent of £20 a year. When this holding was created it had already a suitable cottage, but £100 was needed to provide outbuildings, and Lord Harrowby’s custom is to charge 5% on outlay of this kind. This £5, however, is included in the total rent of £20 paid for cottage, land and garden. The man was not only content, but wished to get some more land. The next class consists of those who have not enough land to live on but eke out their livelihood by casual labour. Usually a man of this sort requires from 35 to 50 acres of land mostly pasture. He can attend to it and yet give a certain number of days to estate work. The third class is that of the small farmer who gains his entire livelihood from the land. The obstacle to breaking up large farms into small lies of course in the expense of providing the necessary equipment. It has been found here that a cottage suitable for a small farmer costs about £400 to build in a substantial manner, and the outbuildings about £200. This makes an addition therefore of about £30 to the rent of the land. The ardour with which these tenancies were sought when vacant formed the best testimony to the soundness of the principle applied by Lord Harrowby.
A nest of small holdings was created at Winterslow, near Salisbury, by Major R. M. Poore. The holders completed the purchase by 1906, and the work may be pronounced a complete success. Major Poore originally conceived the idea when land was cheap in 1892, owing to the depression in agriculture. He purchased an estate that came into the market at the time. The price came to an average of £10 an acre, and the men themselves made the average for selling it out again £15 on a principle of instalments. His object was not to make any profit from the transaction, and he formed what is termed a Landholders’ Court, formed of the men themselves, every ten choosing one to represent them. This court was found to act well. It collected the instalments, which are paid in advance; and of course the members of it, down to the minutest detail, knew not only the circumstances but the character of every applicant for land. The result speaks for itself. The owners are, in the true sense of the word, peasants. They do not depend on the land for a living, but work in various callings—many being woodmen—for wages that average about 15s. a week. The holdings vary in size from less than an acre to ten acres, and are technically held on a lease of 1999 years, practically freehold, though by the adoption of a leasehold form a saving was effected in the cost of transfer. On the holdings most of the men have erected houses, using for the purpose chalk dug up from their gardens, it lying only a few inches below the surface. It is not rock, but soft chalk, so that they are practically mud walls; but being as a rule at least 18 inches thick, the houses are very cool in summer and warm in winter. Major Poore calculated that in seven years these poor people—there are not thirty of them altogether—managed to produce for their houses and land a gross sum of not less than £5000. This he attributed to the loyal manner in which even distant members of the family have helped.
The class of holding which owes its existence to the act of 1892 may be illustrated by the history of the Worcestershire small holdings. The inception of the scheme was due to the decline of the nail-making business, which caused a number of the inhabitants to be without occupation. Two candidates for election to the county council looking out for a popular cry found it in the demand for land. They promised to do their best in this direction, and thanks to the energetic action of Mr Willis Bund, the chairman, the act was put in force. Woodrow Farm, adjoining the village of Catshill in the neighbourhood of Birmingham, was purchased on terms that enabled the land to be sold to the peasant cultivator at £40 an acre. They were paying this back at the rate of 4% on the purchase money, a rate that included both interest and sinking fund, so that at the end of forty years they would own the small estates free from encumbrance. The huge population of Birmingham is close to the properties. The men turned their attention mostly to
