Smallholder

“ The small capitalist, it is true, generally combines with the business of direction some portion of the details, which the other leaves to his subordinates: the small farmer follows his own plough, the small tradesman serves in his own shop, the small weaver plies his own loom. ”

“ The freeholder, for whose behoof the system was invented, has a claim for special pity. He may possibly have been a blissful, unsophisticated, pastoral proprietor, but, in an evil hour, his men of business tell him that his quiet fields have been developed into building land; and then his misery begins. He seems to see before him the potentiality of wealth without exertion. He is called, by reason of this building land, a man of property; and hearing, and of course believing this, he far too often calculates his expectations as realities, and so begins to live, apart from fact, in dreamy hope. ”

“ The small farmers had suffered more than the large ones, and the condition of the small freeholders was said to be deplorable; a fact to be noted by those who think small holdings a panacea for distress. ”

“ He felt, and the feeling was undoubtedly just, that the possession of a small independent property would secure to him the much-wanted support in life, not only as furnishing him with additional means of subsistence, but in raising his mental energies, dependent hitherto upon the fitful accidents connected with his position of farm-labourer. ”

“ One of the chief complaints of small holders in the past has been that large holders regard them askance. The same, perhaps, applies to the attitude of the small holder to the allotment holder. That is all bad. Men and women on the land should be one big family, with interests, and sympathies in common and a neighbourly feeling. ”

“ Thus, even among the freeholders, landholding is often what I shall take leave to call 'shareholding,' Now, whatever ultimate explanation we may give of this fact, it has one obvious meaning. That part of the free population which holds in regular shares is not governed entirely by the rules of private ownership, but is somehow implicated in the village community. ”

“ But when he comes to give all the goods he has year after year collected, in one estate to his son, house, orchard, ploughed land, cattle, bridges, hardware, wooden-ware, carpets, cloths, provisions, books, money, and cannot give him the skill and experience which made or collected these, and the method and place they have in his own life, the son finds his hands full,—not to use these things,—but to look after them and defend them from their natural enemies. To him they are not means, but masters. ”

“ He does not like to part with them, and he spends his life bowed over them. Worse than this, unable to avert the further dismemberment of his estate on his death, he resolves in compact with his wife to have no more than one, or at the most two children. Now, with us, the younger son of a landed proprietor knows he must push his way in the world, and from the moment his intelligence begins to act he looks about him for openings. Our labourers also, unchained to the soil, go about wherever work may be had. ”

“ In Europe, the law of primogeniture, and perpetuities of different kinds, prevent the division of great estates, and thereby hinder the multiplication of small proprietors. A small proprietor, however, who knows every part of his little territory, views it with all the affection which property, especially small property, naturally inspires, and who upon that account takes pleasure, not only in cultivating, but in adorning it, is generally of all improvers the most industrious, the most intelligent, and the most successful. ”

“ The son took his mother back again, and Great Duty walked beside him.
When he came to their courtyard door, he saw his younger brother coming out, holding Small Profit in his arms.
"Where are you going?" he said to him.
His brother answered: "Small Profit is a divine being, who does not wish to dwell for all time among men. He wants to fly back to the heavens, and so I am escorting him." ”

“ In a small Establishment, circumscribed and confined to the limits of a single village or parish, it might perhaps be difficult to find a good market for the yarn spun by the Poor; but in a general Establishment, extending over a whole country, or large city, as the quantity of yarn spun by all the Poor within the extensive limits of the institution will be sufficient to employ constantly a number of weavers of different kinds of cloth and stuff, the market for all the various kinds of yarn the Poor may spin will always be certain. ”

“ In those cases in which common pastures belong to sections of the burgers of a commune, that is to say, to corporations, for instance, to the burgers of a particular hamlet, or to certain families, either with or without a definite object to be promoted by the use, or the proceeds, of the common property, or in some way or other by those who hold it, it is found that the same disturbing action, as in the case of the communal property, though not quite to the same degree, has been introduced by the influx of riches. Some get rich, and some get poor ”

“ Then, the intelligent middle class: the small landed proprietors of two generations. The old proprietor is ignorant and good-natured, of respectable family, but with coarse habits; hard, from long experience of serfdom, servile himself, but admirable in all other relations of life. ”

“ They are small independent proprietors of land, here called statesmen, men of respectable education, who daily labour on their own little properties. The domestic affections will always be strong amongst men who live in a country not crowded with population, if these men are placed above poverty. But if they are proprietors of small estates, which have descended to them from their ancestors, the power, which these affections will acquire amongst such men, is inconceivable by those who have only had an opportunity of observing hired labourers, farmers, and the manufacturing poor. ”

“ To this Lien invariably replied:
“It is true my years are many, and that I am not worth a hair as a labourer, domestic servant, or tutor; but the purchaser I seek is a wealthy orphan, to whom I could act in the capacity of a father, by taking care of his money and property, managing his affairs, and regulating his household.” ”

“ The writer of the Bedfordshire Report in 1808 says that ‘it appears that the poor have invariably been inimical to enclosures, as they certainly remain to the present day.’ [95] Dr. Wilkinson, writing in the Annals of Agriculture [96] in favour of a General Enclosure Bill says, ‘the grand objection to the inclosure of commons arises from the unpopularity which gentlemen who are active in the cause expose themselves to in their own neighbourhood, from the discontent of the poor when any such question is agitated.’ Arthur Young makes a similar statement. ”

“ One of the striking features of our economic development is the disappearance of the small community and the small business, with the personal interest of each in all, employer and employed; and in its place we see the herding together of great masses of people in our large cities, each class by itself ”

“ They know that today the private property of the small producers is the strongest support of the principle of private ownership in general, and therefore of their whole system of exploitation. To the good of the small producer they are indifferent. ”

“ But I am not concerned with the defense of small proprietorship, but merely with the fact that it exists almost everywhere except in England. It is also true, however, that this estate of small possession is attacked everywhere today; it has never existed among ourselves, and it may be destroyed among our neighbors. ”

“ But I do not think it will anywhere be found that the petite culture is the system of the peasants, and the grande culture that of the great landlords: on the contrary, wherever the small properties are divided among too many proprietors, I believe it to be true that the large properties also are parcelled out among too many farmers, and that the cause is the same in both cases, a backward state of capital, skill, and agricultural enterprise. ”

“ The small income, which, when all was happiness, health and peace, was made to constitute a comfortable household, was now totally inadequate to do so—the power to economise and to make the most of a little, had flown along with that contentedness of spirit which the harmony of circumstances alone could produce. ”

“ Whatever is noted on his bit of paper represents his share, and so on until all are drawn. The household furniture, water-jars, utensils of every kind, and all the grain and fuel on hand must be all taken out in public in the presence of the middlemen to be sure that nothing is secreted. We have known a particularly obstreperous son to come to his father’s house the day after a division, and under pretence of looking for something which he had lost, to feel in every jar and pot to be sure that no beans or millet had escaped him. ”

“ Let him who owns and those who work, receive Their fair division of the profits reaped. The owner gives the land and the machines To work the raw material, yielding gain. Let this be calculated as his toil, And grain, proportionate to such, bestowed, While those, whose labour has produced the grain, Receive their fair share of the profits too. Thus all would have an interest in the work, 37 And feel they laboured not, nor toiled in vain. Strikes and disputes would fade like restless dreams, And Brotherhood would knit the hearts of men. ”

“ By it his whole property— (not so large as some of you might wish, but yet a goodly property for farmers like yourselves) —is to be divided this night, share and share alike, among such of his relatives as have found it convenient to be present here between the strokes of half-past seven and eight. If some of our friends have failed us through sloth, sickness or the misfortune of mistaking the road, they have our sympathy, but they can not have his dollars. ”

“ We live upon the labours of the poor in districts far from our homes. Our fathers and brothers may have chambers, factories, offices right down among them. We are content to draw our wealth from these. Does this imply no duty? Is the whole duty fulfilled when the head of a firm draws a cheque for donations to the local charity, and are the gentle ministrations of the ladies of the family to be confined to the few pampered poor near their house? ”

“ I have often wondered how a little contemptible corporation, consisting, as some of them do, of broom-makers, hedge-breakers, and sheep-stealers, could stand the looks and rebukes of a rich and honest neighbourhood, after these dirty rogues had openly sold at the market-cross, perhaps for forty shillings a-piece, not only their own liberties, but, as far as in them lay, the liberties of that rich neighbourhood and all England. ”

“ The counter-tendency toward the persistence of small-unit farming and of small-shop production and distribution must not be lost sight of, nor must the great combinations be looked upon as necessarily a proof of individual concentration of wealth. ”

“ And if a collector, seeing them, tries to collect the revenue, the gentry take the peasant’s part and send the collector away more dead than alive, and the government officers look on, and dare not interfere. ”

“ If one member of the family made an entire pair of shoes, for example, he was clearly entitled to those shoes, at least so far as economic principles are concerned. Even where different members of the family combined to produce a pair of shoes or an article of clothing, the small number of persons involved, as well as the close identity of interests among the family members, kept the problem of distribution from becoming a serious one. ”

“ It is even doubtful whether small peasant proprietorship could be maintained without these additional resources. But the ethical importance of the communal possessions, small as they are, is still greater than their economical value. ”

“ The earth shall be planted, and the fruits reaped and carried into store-houses, by common assistance of every family. The riches of the store-houses shall be the common stock to every family. There shall be no idle person nor beggar in the land. ”

“ Their wives and children, no longer toiling under the lash, are now engaged in the occupations of the family and of the school; while many of the fathers and husbands have become landholders, and raise their own food, and also articles for the market. ”

“ And not only to leave unreaped, but how, in cases where the ‘corner’ was of a sort hard for the poor to gather, hanging high, as dates, or needing light handling, as grapes, it became the duty of the owner to undertake the ‘reaping’ thereof, and, himself, to make the rightful division; thus guarding against injury to quickly perishable fruits from too eager hands, or danger of a more serious sort to life or limbs, where ladders had to be used by hungry and impatient folks. ”

“ Whatever may have been the arguments in favour of enclosure, the inevitable effect on village life was to squeeze the small man out of existence and to perpetuate the big farm employing workers at starvation wages. ”

“ Personally I like the rogue—he is most companionable, especially if you have no work to do. ¶ The tendency of property of every sort is towards depreciation and dissolution. Only eternal vigilance and tireless industry keep a manufacturing plant or a farm effective ❦ Jack does not know this. Jack thinks that to own property is to be immune from work. The truth is, ownership is a responsibility and a burden. Most of the Socialists I know do not work—they only talk about work. ”