Estates | 123 | 90223| 85.4| 734 | 67 |19391 | 73.4| 289 with large | | | | | | | | agriculture| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Management | 6 | 556| 0.5| .. | 5 | 1060 | 4.0| .. not stated | | | | | | | | +--------+------+-----+--------+--------+------+-----+-------- Total | 185 |105515|100 | 576 | 94 |26438 |100 | 281 -----------+--------+------+-----+--------+--------+------+-----+-------- The nobility has proved able to farm only on the largest estates. Where the nobleman would merely distribute his estate in small lots among peasant tenants, the capitalist landholder carries on agriculture on a large scale: _Dessiatines._ Average holding of a noble in small peasant tenure 273 Average holding of a capitalist with farming on a large scale 289 The average holding on which peasant tenure pays the capitalist better than farming, is less than one-half the corresponding size of a noble’s estate. Accordingly we find that wherever the capitalist has replaced the noble, the exclusive practice of small peasant tenure has lost over one-half of its area: _Estates in small peasant tenure._ _Percentage in the area._ Property of the nobility 13.4 Property of the capitalists 6.3 Among the capitalists we notice the timber speculator, who purchases tracts without ploughland, or, perhaps, sells the latter to the small farmer. Yet, with all that, three-fourths of the total area acquired by the capitalist class are farmed by the owners. Practical business men who invest their money in large estates, would undoubtedly prefer to quietly pocket the enormous rents paid by the peasants, if in reality agriculture on a large scale had proved a loss, as both the nobility and the peasantists claimed.[169] Moreover, the management of the estates by the capitalists is far superior to that which the noble landlord could afford. The capitalist would manure his fields as soon as his holding reaches scarcely one-half the average estate on which the nobleman would care to fertilize the soil; and even then the latter lags behind the capitalist as regards the area yearly manured: