72. The second stage aims at providing both practical and theoretical training for farmers, and the sons of farmers. Such are the schools of agriculture of the "middle degree" in Holland, the public agricultural schools of Germany, the private agricultural schools of Denmark, the practical schools of France. In Britain, this grade of education is represented now by the recently organised Farm Institutes.

73. The third stage includes various forms of lower schools, which are not easily classified, of practical training on farms, and winter and summer courses of lectures.

74. An essential feature of the whole system is the organisation, already referred to, of the travelling teachers, the "Konsulents," "advisers," or "agronomes," whether appointed by public bodies, such as Chambers of Agriculture, or by the private agricultural organisations on their own account. This is a form of education particularly suited to the needs of a scattered industry like farming. Not only does it circulate the results of research; it serves also to keep professors and other teachers in close touch with the industry. The farmers and small holders in other countries have not been unwilling to seek the advice of the agronomes who are specialised according to local conditions of cultivation, and who have the supervision of a large number of local demonstration plots. The agronomes who are appointed by voluntary agricultural associations represent an important form of selfhelp by the peasants, and are a link in the social life of the industry. Knowledge is carried outwards, and information as to the needs and conditions of the farmers is carried inwards to the centres of influence.

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75. The work attempted on the Continent by this means is so well known that it may be of more special interest to quote here its recent development in the United States under an Act passed in 1914. In 1922 the sum applied, under various grants, to extension education on the farms was about 4 millions sterling, equivalent, on the basis of cultivated land, to about £275,000 in Britain. A field of activity is created for graduates of colleges, "who are specially prepared for it by a thorough knowledge of the district to which they are assigned." These are the county agents" whose average area is about that of Rutland, and there are now over 2,000 of them working under Federal and State direction. There are also about 800 "home-demonstration agents," and 200 "club agents." "This staff of field workers is directed and informed by 750 district agents and specialists in research." It is not only to the extension of education in relation to the craft of farming that the County Agents devote themselves. There are also "marketing" agents. "County agents and specialists in marketing are employed as public officers. The whole service is an educational activity intended to ascertain the needs of the farmers, assess their problems, and bring to them such knowledge, information and experience as have been acquired elsewhere. If groups of farmers.

decide to organise for the purpose of marketing their products or purchasing supplies, it is the duty of the county agents and extension specialists in marketing to assist such farmers and give them all possible information regarding the best methods of organisation and current business practices for such organisation."

76. In this country, the future development and wider scope of the work of the County Organisers is of the utmost importance in supplying a similar need, of the small farmer especially, and in giving vitality to the work done at the centres of instruction. In the First Interim Report the opinion was stated that the Scottish plan of associating the organisers with the Colleges has advantages, in that it ensures that the area of the country will be covered, and enhances the status of the staff so engaged. In some important agricultural counties of England, such as Norfolk, West Suffolk and Dorset, no organisers have been appointed; and a suggestion has been made to us that pressure might be brought to bear by an arrangement between the Ministries of Education and Agriculture, whereby general educational grants might be made to depend on the completeness of the scheme of education as a whole, including agricultural education.

77. The evidence we have received is, however, to the effect that the plan of agricultural education in this country is on right lines as a whole, and corresponds in our conditions to the general features of foreign schemes. Its completion has only recently been accomplished. The comparative lateness of our system of agricultural education is itself a reason not only for its adequate maintenance, but for its active development.

78. Our evidence has shown another special feature of agricultural instruction, for which fuller allowance could with advantage be made. The study of what is being done abroad, as regards methods and organisation, and, depending on this, the study of agriculture in relation to national economy, should have an important place in the curricula of Agricultural Colleges and even of Farm Institutes. Thus the course of study in some of the chief higher Institutes of Germany includes as an essential feature such matters as national economy, agrarian policy, the labour and social questions involved, and agricultural organisation. Agriculture as a whole is being thought out, not merely its technique. It is an industry which especially requires the driving force of ideas of organisation; and it is desirable that steps should be taken with a view to broadening the basis of education in this country in this respect.

C.-Small Holdings.

79. The part played in their agricultural economy by relatively small holdings or holdings of moderate size, is the chief contrast which all the European nations offer in relation

* Report of the Department of Agriculture, 1919, p. 207.

to Britain. It is not proposed to enter here into the historical causes of this development. While the land was being enclosed in this country, by measures which made the position too difficult for the small farmer, other countries maintained the peasant cultivator. The legislation prior to the period of our Reference, of Germany and Denmark, is of special interest. The peasant was protected against the manor, and the ideals of this legislation have been steadily maintained since 1870.

80. But since the "small-holdings policy" is still, in the view of many agriculturists, a debateable question for Britain, it will be of interest to quote some typical measures for extending the system abroad in the last fifty years. What may be called deliberate policy does not explain all the facts as they now exist. The laws of succession, or limitations of these laws-such as the prohibition of new entails in Denmark and Belgium-explain some differences. But there has also been deliberate policy, implying that these countries believe the maintenance on a large scale of small holders to be a desirable thing, under their own conditions. It is one obvious way of maintaining the rural population, and this involves a number of motives such as health, defence, productivity, social ideals, and the provision of employment as an alternative to emigration. All these motives may not apply in the same degree to Britain; and the following summary of the policy abroad is offered meanwhile as a contribution to a discussion which is resumed later.

81. A "small" holding is not a simple thing to define. The nature of the crop, climate, and soil have to be taken into account. The official definition of a small-holder in Denmark, for example, gives about 25 acres as the limit of size; in this country it is 50 acres. For the sake of a general comparison, the latter may be taken as a basis, and the average holding may be used as a check. It has, unfortunately, been found impossible to chart for a number of countries the distribution of holdings by size; there is not sufficient uniformity in the method of making returns. In the general comparison which follows, the number of males permanently employed per 100 acres has been put in, since small holdings compete with arable cultivation as a method of maintaining the agricultural population.

82. Prior to the war, the functions of the Dutch Government in relation to agriculture had been almost entirely educa

tional. But a Royal Commission reported in 1908 on the serious economic position of the wage labourer, and the Small Holdings Act of 1918 is the chief recent measure of agricultural policy in that country. Public funds are advanced at interest to town councils, which deal either with voluntary associations or direct with the labourer. The arrangements seem to make purchase easier than under the English Act of 1908, only onetenth of the price being paid immediately, and interest alone (without sinking fund contribution) being paid on the balance for the first three years. But no subsidy is given to the movement. Though Holland is already a country of small holdings, the Act has already led to a great development of voluntary associations for their further establishment.

83. In Germany, the Government of Prussia undertook, by the well-known" Rentengüter" laws of 1890 and 1891, a further extension of small holdings, for the threefold purpose of preventing the migration of agricultural labourers, increasing the class of small peasant proprietors, and developing" internal colonisation" on hitherto uncultivated land. Under these laws, the freehold of the land was transferred against a permanent charge in lieu of a purchase price; and the State Rent Banks were given the function of paying off the vendor in bonds, and commuting the greater part of the permanent charge into a terminable annuity. The Banks could lend to the purchaser a sum sufficient to enable him to erect the necessary buildings on his holding; and the first payment of the annual charge due to the Bank could be deferred for a year, and treated as a loan. The results up to 1914 were that the Banks had paid to the vendors about twelve millions sterling, and had settled about 20,000 colonists on about 575,000 acres. These results appear to be expensive, and not otherwise noteworthy in comparison with our own. But a stronger policy is now being outlined under the new Constitution.

*

84. Small-holdings legislation in Denmark, in the sense in which we understand it, began under the Act of 1899, qualified by amendments due largely to the increasing cost of land and buildings. The applicant arranges with a willing seller, and the State advances nine-tenths of the cost of land and buildings. But the post-war amendments divide this nine-tenths, partly into a loan, and partly into a subvention, the latter being for the erection of buildings; for the year 1921-2 the loan was six-tenths, and the subvention three-tenths; for 1922-3 the proportions of loan and subvention were to be decided by the Minister of Agriculture. The legislation also includes the condition of relief from all but interest on the loan in the early years. Its aim is to create owners, and not tenants. Under this legislation, 9,860 holdings had been created from 1900 to 1922, the State loans being slightly over three millions sterling, plus subvention of about £100,000 in 1921-2. This should be compared with

* International Review of Agricultural Economics, July, 1917.

the amount of five and a quarter millions sterling advanced in this country between 1908 and 1914 for the purchase of land and equipment, for the settlement of over 14,000 small holders.

85. The more drastic legislation of 1919 is fully explained in official evidence submitted to us. The law of that year regarding the disentailing of the remaining entailed estates may be specially quoted to indicate the pressure of the demand for small holdings in Denmark. An entailed estate, which under the previous law could not be disentailed, may be disentailed if the owner pays to the State a quarter of the value of such part of his estate as might in given circumstances revert to the Crown, together with a fifth of the value of the rest of his estate. At the same time he must place at the disposal of the State for small holdings up to one-third of his land. The former payments are employed to purchase this, or other land, for small holdings. If the owner does not accept these conditions, he will have to pay to the State a yearly tax of 13 per cent. of the value of the land which might revert to the Crown, plus one per cent. of the value of his other possessions, but the conditions have generally been accepted.

86. On the other hand, the small holder does not buy the land, but pays a rentcharge fixed for two years in the first instance at 21 per cent. of the valuation; and adjustable thereafter to any increment in the value of the land that is not due to his own efforts. For the erection of buildings, he can obtain a State loan amounting to nine-tenths of the estimated cost. This loan has to pay interest at the rate of 4 per cent. of the sum which would have been granted to a small holder had the buildings been erected in 1914, in which year the maximum cost allowed was 6,000 crowns. In other words, the small holder receives a loan of nine-tenths of the building costs, but pays interest only on the first 6,000 crowns, or about £330.

87. By parallel laws of the same date, crown and glebe lands were to be utilised for small holdings purposes. From entailed estates, it is estimated that some 53,000 acres will be available; between 1920 and 1922 nearly 25,000 acres had been added to the area of small holdings from glebe and Crown lands alone. It will be seen that there is a slight similarity between these State tenancies and the "Rentengüter" of Prussia; but that in Denmark the financial machinery of the Rent Banks has not been created to terminate any part of the annual charge. This departure from ownership to State tenancy has been the subject of much controversy in Denmark.

88. In addition to this main line of small holdings legislation, the State has by a law of 1911 and its subsequent amendments, offered loans to Societies formed for the purpose of buying large holdings, in order to subdivide them into smaller holdings. On these loans interest only is paid for the first five years. This appears to correspond to the " colony" system under the English. Act of 1916. Nine societies now exist under these laws, and