WCP5486

[1]¹

Frith Hill, Godalming.

Oct[obe]^r. 30th 1884

My dear Sir

Many thanks for your remarks on my paper.² I am always glad to know how my views strike others, as it is so difficult for a writer on these questions to tell put himself in the mental attitude of those who have hitherto held different views, and even if he does not agree with the objections he learns where more full discussion is needed.

In the case of your main objection there seems to me to be a little misconception. "Peasant-farms which occupy a man’s whole time" — about which you are doubtful, form no part of my present proposal except incidentally. What I have in my paper maintained that there is no practical disagreement about, is, that it is an enormous benefit for every [2] labourer to have an acre of land (or two or more in exceptional cases) to occupy his <over?> time, & compulsorily idle time. All the argument of my paper goes to this point only. I refer to the use & value of cottage farms as a supplementary matter of great ^importance, but not of the vital importance of the other.

I did not go into the question of peasant farms because it would have doubled the length of my paper, and I have already given a full summary of the facts in their favour in my [illeg. letter or number scribbled out] little book on "Land Nationalisation".³ I will however make a few remarks on your objections. [3]

As to why the yeomen disappeared there is much difference of opinion. I don’t profess to know, because I do not consider it a point of much importance, but I have always considered that the chief cause was the enormous growth of wealth by manufactures & commerce & the corresponding rise in value of land, with the greed for land of the wealthy being a temptation to the yeomen to sell their farms which they could not resist. They were absorbed into great estates, & there was no corresponding <great?> creation of small estates, owing to the general ^great demand for land by great landowners, not necessarily because the yeoman could not live on their farms.

Again the whole conditions have now [4] changed. Large tenant farms in England & large sheep farms in the Highlands, which were all the rage 50 to 100 years ago, no longer pay. All I ask for, is, that small farms may be allowed to grow up again naturally. If they do not pay they will not arise, — but that does not affect the land & the labourer question.

Again as to the flow from the country to the towns having always existed. I quite admit it. All I say in my paper is, that the diminution of the population of whole Counties was first noticed 20 years ago. Previous to the last 50 or 60 years the surplus rural population went mostly to increase the country towns and large villages; but for the last 30 years it has gone mostly to great manufacturing towns & cities. [5] The first principle I most strongly urge is, that no man or body of men should be allowed to determine the natural flow of population over the surface of our country, or interpose any barriers to the cultivation of the land ^{in any way individuals find best,} To all schemes for establishing peasant farms I am as strongly opposed as any are. I only ask for them to be allowed freely to grow, — which they will only do if they fulfil a need and are profitable, and till they are allowed to thus grow no one can possibly [6] say they will not succeed. Never, in modern times, have men been allowed any real freedom in the use of their native soil, and it is impossible to argue from what occurred without this free development as to what will occur under it.

I do not think you can have read (recently) the Chap[ter]. on "Occupying Ownership" in my Land Nationalisation, or would hardly say that a case had not been made out in favour of [7] small farms, at the present day.

I believe myself that with free growth of population over the land, under such conditions of security as I propose, ^home markets would be created around ⁱⁿ every district, and moreover that home industries, either purely domestic or in small cooperative factories would naturally spring up as a means of utilising the savings and spare labour of the rural populations. Under present conditions no such growth is possible, — and we have huge & hideous manufacturing [8] towns on the one hand — a desert & half cultivated country on the other.

Believe me | yours very faithfully | Alfred R. Wallace [signature]

Revd. Wm. Cunningham