In the beginning of the nineteenth century, Robert Owen marked an outstanding success as a cotton spinner while at the same time he gained fame as a humane factory reformer and a pioneer of educator. With the termination of the Napoleonic War in 1815, enormous industrial productivity that was achieved by the British Industrial Revolution immediately created over-production and excessive, unemployment. The working class was, thus, reduced to poverty and the relief of the manufacturing poor surfaced as a critical social problem. It was at this juncture that Owen arrived at the socialistic ideology of the "village of co-operation". Owen considered that the flooding unemployment due to over-production and the poverty of the working class were produced by the enormous industrial productivity which was left to work under the principle of gain that is inherent in capitalism per se. This thinking leads him to consider the total abolishment of capitalism by the establishment of and the gradual development of the so-called "village of co-operation", which has controlled production and expenditure, in order to harness the enormous industrial productivity to meet social demand. The "village of co-operation" is a self-sufficient community based on agriculture and supported by manufacture where members work together and share the expenditure. According to his plan the community is formed of a unit of 1,200 persons. At the centre of the lot there are public buildings which are divided into parallelograms, facilities and gardens that are necessary for enjoying pleasant community life. Beyond these there are mechanical factories and corn-mills and around these there are 1,200 acres of arable land. Men would cultivate land and between farming activities they would engage in manufacturing and other required tasks. Here, the cultivated land is mainly used for production of staple crops, but spade cultivation instead of cultivation by the plough is advocated. In Europe, spade had been used as a tool for cultivating hoed-crops such as garden vegetables, vis-a-vis plough for cultivating corn on arable land. The secret of Owen's "village of co-operation" may be found in the use of this tool to raise corn on arable land so to absorb maximum labour on the existing arable land and consequently look for a harmonious balance in population, food and employment.

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Adrien de Gasparin, a great agronomist in nineteenth-century France, criticized the rigid theory of the "Anglomania" school and tried to show another way of renovation for French agriculture. This original standpoint of Gasparin was born from his observation on the agriculture in Mediterranean Southern France where he lived, and whose specific climate and civilization were to obstruct the introduction of the capitalist farming of English type. In his work written in 1820, Gasparin idealized the small landowners' society in Southern France and in Switzerland, while criticizing the large landownership in England, Spain and southern Italy. Independent small landowners were, in his view, the real basis of agricultural progress as well as of industrious economic life and of political freedom and social equality. The division of land was especially important for Continental agriculture because the scale of landed property must be proportioned to the small quantity of capital available among the farmers there. Gasparin's support for the small landownership was founded on the prosperity of intensive farming of industrial crops such as madder, mulberry in Southern France. He thought this type of small-scale farming the most promising and found other examples in Flanders, Alsace, Tuscany, Switzerland and in the environs of large cities. Gasparin considered the intensive small-scale farming the suitable form of agricultural progress in Southern France, because the major problem of traditional agriculture based on metayage and two fields system consisted in farmers' long leisure and idleness, and the introduction of industrial crops could awake the enterprising spirit in farmers and induce them to work and invest capital incessantly. Thus Gasparin perceived, before Max Weber, the importance of the "spirit of capitalism" for agricultural modernization and this mental point of view was inspired "by his own ascetic Protestantism. Gasparin's thought can be summarized as the conception of "small-scale capitalistic farming" as against large-scale capitalist farming of English type. The truth of his theory was proved by the development of agriculture in Southern France from that time on.

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With the economic despression in 1930, tenancy disputes increased rapidly. Most of them were the so-called Tochi Henkan Sogi which occured from the landowners' one-sided cancel of the lease. And these disputes were almost dealt with the Tenancy Arbitration Law. In this paper I adopt the materials for the tenancy arbitration in Akita prefecture and try to prove some characteristics of the Tochi Henkan Sogi in Tohoku district. Of the Tochi Henkan Sogi, there were three types. In the first type, the landowners force the tenant farmers to restitute the land in order to deal with the arrears of rent. They try to change their tenant farmers and maintain their rent-income. They were parasite large-scale landlords who could make their living with the rent-income only, or petty landlords who possesed less than 1 cho (hectare) and had no ability to cultivate their own land. In the second type, the landowners force them to do it in order to cultivate themselves. They try to increase the scale of their home farm and secure their income. They were small-scale landlords who were in possession of 3-10 cho and had cultivated themselves in the village. In the third type, the peasants who have brought the land recently force them to do it in order to cultivate the land. They were mainly tenant cultivators or part-owner cultivators. In this type, the Tochi Henkan Sogi were the dispute between the peasantry. The number of the Tochi Henkan Sogi which belonged to the first type accounted for 70 per cent of all, that of the second 10 per cent and that of the third 20 per cent. The Tochi Henkan Sogi generally resulted in disadvantage of the tenant farmers. Specially during 1930-35, those almost obliged them to restitute the land and reduced their farm. Under the war-time system, the tenant farmers' situation was slightly improved and the Tochi Henkan Sogi began to decrease.

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