Note 13 — Chapter XIII

The dwarf farms found in many parts of Europe are even less economical. The Bavarian, French, or Belgian peasant secures more per acre than the American farmer but much less per hour or year of work. "Small scale farming, as we have defined it," says Prof. Thomas Nixon Carver, "invariably means small incomes for the farmers, though the land is usually well cultivated and yields large crops per acre." "The French or the Belgian peasant (because of the smallness of his farm) frequently finds it more profitable to dispense altogether with horses, or even oxen, as draft animals, using rather a pair of milch cows, or only a single cow, for such work as he cannot do with his own muscles." "He would likewise find a reaping or a mowing machine a poor investment. The general result of such small scale staple farming is necessarily the use of laborious and inefficient methods."—"Principles of Rural Economics," pp. 253-54. New York, 1911.