7 MAY 1881, Page 14

THE PROSPECTS OF FARM LABOURERS.

[To TEE EDITOR OF THE 6PEOTATOECI

S1R,—In your interesting article on " The Reduction of the Rural Population," there is a statement to which you will, I am sure, allow me to take exception. You say, " If they [the labourers] work from the age of eighteen to sixty for just masters, they can hardly save enough to avoid the workhouse."' 1 know a lad of eighteen who is an under-carter, having, as is usual, his lodgings found him. His wages were Os. a week, and he received a lump sum of £4 at Michaelmas. Being. desirous to emigrate, he saved last year 3s. a week during six months towards his passage-money, to which he added £1 out of his Michaelmas money, thus making up the £5 required.. Now, what this lad could do, others could do. If he saved at the rate of £8 a year, so could any one. £8 laid by for twenty years will produce, roughly speaking, £237. Considering that my friend the under-carter might fairly expect to be a bead-carter by the time he was twenty-eight years old, when he would earn• 18s. a week, and a cottage, he might easily lay by the sum I have mentioned by the time he was thirty-eight, especially if he did not marry till then. Why, then, do not all labourers copy my friend P For two reasons, want of motive, and love of beer. My friend was a total abstainer, and ho wanted to make• a man of himself in Canada.

The Poor Law has trained every one from childhood in the

knowledge that he has always the rates, i.e., his neighbours' savings, to fall back upon. There are no Post•Office Savings Banks, as a rule, in villages, only in towns. Having no safe place in which to put his money, the labourer has still less object in saving. When savings-banks are extended to the

villages, and out-door relief abolished, less money will go in beer, and more into the bank. And when once a labourer has got his £200 or £300, he will find no difficulty, even now, in obtaining a few acres of grass and a couple of cows.—I am,

.[Mr. Portal's carter is exs,,eptional. The majority of the• human race, in this country at least, will not voluntarily live single till thirty-eight on bread and water and a shilling a day,, for a future benefit. Mr. Portal's friend was an ideal English labourer, and consequently he emigrated, rather than be an English labourer any more.—En. Spectator.]