The divorce of the labourer from the land by enclosure had early exercised men’s minds, and many efforts were made to remedy this.  About 1836 especially, several landowners in various parts of England introduced allotments, and the movement spread rapidly, so that in 1893 the Royal Commission on Labour stated that in most places the supply was equal to or in excess of the demand.[702] However, previous Allotments and Small Holdings Acts not being considered so successful as was desired, in 1907 an effort was made to give more effect to the cry of ‘back to the land’ by a Small Holdings and Allotments Act[703] which enables County Councils to purchase land by agreement or take it on lease, and, if unable to acquire it by agreement, to do so compulsorily, in order to provide small holdings for persons desiring to lease them.  The County Council may also arrange with any Borough Council or Urban District Council to act as its agent in providing and managing small holdings.  The duty of supplying allotments rests in the first instance with the Rural Parish Councils, though if they do not take proper steps to provide allotments, the County Council may itself provide them.

It is a praiseworthy effort, though marked by arbitrary methods and that contempt for the rights of property, provided it belongs to some one else, that is a characteristic of to-day.  That it will succeed where the small holder has some other trade, and in exceptionally favoured situations, is very probable; most of the small holders who were successful before the Act had something to fall back upon:  they were dealers, hawkers, butchers, small tradesmen, &c.  There is no doubt, too, that an allotment helps both the town artisan and the country labourer to tide over slack times.  Whether it will succeed in planting a rural population on English soil is another matter.  It is a consummation devoutly to be wished, for a country without a sound reserve of healthy country-people is bound to deteriorate.  The small holder, pure and simple, without any by-industry, has hitherto only been able to keep his head above water by a life which without exaggeration may be called one of incessant toil and frequent privation, such a life as the great mass of our ’febrile factory element’ could not endure.  And if there is one tendency more marked than another in the history of English agriculture, it is the disappearance of the small holding.  In the Middle Ages it is probable that the average size of a man’s farm was 30 acres, with its attendant waste and wood; since then amalgamation has been almost constant.

It is true that the occupier of a few acres often brings to bear on it an amount of industry which is greater in proportion than that bestowed on a large farm; but the large farmer has, as Young pointed out long ago, very great advantages.  He is nearly always a man of superior intelligence and training.  He has more capital, and can buy and sell in the best markets; he can purchase better stock, and save labour and the cost of production by using the best machinery.  By buying in large quantities he gets manures, cakes, seeds, &c., better and cheaper than the small holder.