THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER.
TORD ROSEBERY'S jest about the people whose ideal of mental and physical food is a "Blue- book and a biscuit," does not apply to the two "Blue- books" on the Agricultural Labourer just issued by the Labour Commission. For those who know anything about English country-life, or are interested in the future of English agriculture, these Reports will prove as read- able as a novel. They are full of curious and valuable information, conveyed, not in the usual official style, but with a simplicity and directness which makes them excel- lent reading. In form, they are Reports made by the two Assistant-Commissioners, Mr. Bear and. Mr. Wilkinson, appointed by the Labour Commission to inquire into the condition of the agricultural labourer in certain districts selected as typical of various portions of England. These districts belong to the counties of Redford, Hampshire, Huntingdon, Leicester, Nottingham, Sussex, Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Staffordshire, and Yorkshire (North, East, and West Ridings), and the facts gathered may therefore be fairly regarded as representative. No doubt, a certain number of new facts might have been discovered if a dis- trict had been taken in every county of England ; but if the work was to be done by "sampling," the plan of operations adopted was probably as good a one as could have been devised.
The main conclusions that emerge in the Reports of the two Commissioners, notwithstanding that they are evi- dently men with very different points of view, are sub- stantially the same. To begin with, both Reports show that, on the whole, the condition of the ordinary agricul- tural labourer is distinctly not one of misery, and that it has improved, and is probably still improving, though it is, of course, liable to sudden drops, as is the case in all other trades. Secondly, that the depopulation of the country districts, owing to a stampede of labourers to the towns, has very nearly come to an end. Thirdly, that the difficulty of finding work has been exaggerated, and that as a rule a man willing to work is always able to get it. Fourthly, that wages are often higher than they sound owing to allowances of various kinds,--such as free cottages. Lastly (though this is to be drawn rather from what is said by Mr. Bear than from Mr. Wilkinson's Report), that small holdings may be made to play a considerable part in the improvement of the labourer's condition. Few of these deductions, we must point out, are made specifically by the Commissioners. They are rather the conclusions which are borne in upon the reader by a study of the masses of fact col- lected and tabulated in the two Blue-books. It has been hinted in some quarters that the Reports must be worthless because they are so optimistic. We do not agree at all with this verdict. To begin with, they are hy no means optimistic in the bad sense, and in no way repre- sent the English village as a paradise. All they do is to show that the fancy sketch of the agricultural labourer which is so often presented to us is not worthy of credit, and that our ploughmen and carters are not as badly off as it has become the fashion to represent them. If optimism means speaking of things as they are, and refusing to scream' then the Reports are optimistic, but not other- wise. On the general condition of the rural labourers, what Mr. Bear says is that "taking all things into consideration, they were never so well off as they have been during the last few years." He admits, of course, that in many ways the condition of the labourer is far from satisfactory. "But," he goes on, "if evidence be worth anything, such dire distress as is common in large towns is almost unknown in the rural districts which I have visited, and what exists is almost invariably caused by drunkenness." One of the most interesting things in Mr. Bear's Report is his remark upon the migration of the villagers into the towns. He tells us that whenever he asked why the young men migrated into the towns, he received the same answer : "To earn more money." The conventional reply, that it was "love of excitement," was also given ; but was, he says, always looked on as a very secondary consideration. Mr. Bear says he believes his informants to be right. "Country life is not dull to those who are brought up to it. On the contrary, it is full of interest." This certainly sounds reasonable. It is very difficult to believe that the shy country lad is only shy on the surface, and that inside he is consumed with a burning desire for excitement. We are aware that this is the popular theory ; but we feel it very difficult to reconcile with the facts, and are heartily glad that a man of Mr. Bear's experience has at last had the courage to attack it. There is, however, a cause of migration which, Mr. Bear tells us, acts as strongly as the desire to earn more money. This is the migration of the young women. There is no doubt, he says, that the girls who go into service in the towns, "act as magnets to the lads they leave behind them." But, as we have said above, the depopulation of the country owing to the migration of the men to the towns, is apparently ceasing to be a very serious question. The men are finding out that work in the towns is, after all, not so easy or so pleasant as they imagined. As a proof of this, we may quote a very interesting conversation which Mr. Wilkinson had with a Lincolnshire labourer :— . " Iwas chatting," he says, "one day to a labourer of, I should imaigne, about twenty-eight years of age, and asked him how he considered himself to be off on the 13s. 6d. a week which, he said, he was earning. Much better,' was his reply, than when I got 19s. in the coal-country.' He had worked, it appeared, both in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, but, paying 6s. 6d. a week there for his house as against Is. 6d. here, and for other things in proportion, as well as liking the work there less than agricultural work, he had returned to his native district, quite clear in his own mind that he was better off thus. But what will you say,' I asked him, if wages drop to 12s. a week, as it seems pretty certain they must do?' ' I shall still be better off here,' he replied, though of course, to come down is. 6d. a week will be a bad job. But it must come. Is there any one, who will speak true, who does not know that with prices like now the farmers can't live P If you starve them out of the land, the labourers must be starved out too. There is no coal or iron here to give work, and is this the sort of country that rich gentlemen would come to live in? Do away with those who live by the land, and for miles and miles round here the land will be empty, for no one will come instead.' It gives one hope that some solution for the present agricultural difficulties may be found, when one finds young fellows pondering over them so thoughtfully and with such kindliness of feeling."
Mr. Bear's Report contains some very interesting things in regard to small holdings, which he rightly looks on as means of advancement for the labourer. According to his informants in the St. Neots Union of Huntingdonshire and Bedfordshire, a holding of ten acres is the least out of which a man can hope to make a living, and even then he must do occasional work for hire. But one acre is the very most that an industrious labourer can manage as an allotment. How, then, is the man who wants to rise to the position of a small holder to bridge this gulf P It is a difficult problem in the abstract, but in practice men manage to hold from four to six acres, and to live partly off the land and partly by "working for the farmers." Mr. Bear found, indeed, a colony of such amphibious beings in the district of Pamber and Tadley in Hampshire. "The aie- trict was particularly favourable for the success of small holders, because there is a great area of woodlands close by, and the men find profitable employment in the woods in winter, while in the summer they go to work in many parts of the county, and in the hop districts of other counties, the market-gardens near London, and even to a small extent in the fruit districts of Kent. The men who settled in Pamber and Tadley appear to have been always a ,migratory race, and men, moreover, of great industry and considerable skill in farm and wood work." The size of the holdings varies considerably. Some are fifty acres, some twenty, and others very much smaller. "The twenty-acre men work in the woods, and, therefore, do not obtain their living entirely from the land which they occupy, but those who have fifty acres do not work for others. They get their living by growing corn, keeping pigs, doing a little dairying, and selling hay. As a rule, they pay about 15s. an acre free of tithe, and their rents are paid quite as punctually as those of larger farmers. A great majority of the small holders at Pamber and Tadley, the migratory labourers whose case is the most interesting, hold only from two to three acres of land." It is often said that small holders of this kind lead a very miserable life, but this seems by no means to be the case in this district. They show, in- deed, many signs of prosperity, one of which is that most of them have now acquired ponies instead of the donkeys which they used to own. "They always drive to their work, and the farmers who employ them keep their ponies for them." Their way of living is further described by Mr. Bear:—" They take their wives and children to hay- making, harvesting, hopping, and fruit-picking, but not generally when they go to hoeing. They frequently sleep in barns, and do not take off their clothes for weeks at a time ; but one of them informed me that, although he used to follow this practice, he had found that it was not healthful, and had long discontinued it." One of the witnesses examined by Mr. Bear—a shopkeeper—gave as a proof of the men's prosperity, the fact that they always paid in gold, while the ordinary labourer pays in silver— his earnings never reaching X1 a week.
Before leaving the two Blue-books before us, we must find space for the following very curious account of the inmates of a rural workhouse given in Mr. Wilkinson's Report :— "How anxious most of them are to lead the more independent life is shown by the fact that, on the day of my last visit to the workhouse, there were 13 men in it who regularly take work, or, anyhow, go out again in the spring. One, indeed, of the 13, aged 63, who had been in the house for a few days from ill-health, left that very day for another spell of work, quite confident of work, of which he said he always had plenty. Two others of the 13, aged respectively 67 and 86, also go out again directly the winter is over, getting work regularly. One, who also goes out when the weather is warm, is of a different type. He is only 47 years old, is a popular and handy fellow, who could get as much work as ever he liked, but he does not believe in it '; so he comes into the house regularly for the winter, as regularly leaving it for his 'summer tour,' as he calls it, when the warm weather comes."
The general impression produced by the Blue-books is, first, that things are by no means outrageously bad in the country districts ; secondly, that they are still improving ; lastly, that more ladders are wanted to enable men to rise, and that these ladders are best supplied by small holdings. "No exaggeration and plenty of small holdings," is probably the best motto which the rural philanthropists can emblazon on their banners.
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