HALF-HOLIDAYS FOR FARM LABOURERS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—Lady Wantage is acting with enlightenment and humanity in giving her farm hands a half-holiday on Satur- day. It is not only farm labourers in the country who are in need of this relief The ordinary working boy in a village is terribly overworked, not perhaps to the extent of physical exhaustion so much as to making it extremely difficult, and sometimes impossible, for him to improve himself. I have just returned from the usual Saturday evening in the Boy Scouts' club-room in a West Country village. As I left after nine o'clock one of the boys was just coming home from a round with an oil-cart. Last Saturday his day was over just before midnight. Another boy was at work in the shop till after ten, another seldom can get to the club-room to attend an ambulance class till it is half over (it begins at 7.30), and often is not able to come at alL He carts coal for a colliery. And so I could go on. The colliers loaf at the street corner for hours every day, but the unfortunate boys doing miscellaneous work have no time to themselves. Is it to be wondered at that when they grow up and go into trades like mining they misuse their leisure ? At the age when their characters could be moulded, their employers allow them no time to make use of opportunities, and then these same employers probably complain of the unsatisfactory nature of their workmen when they grow up.—I am, Sir, &c., H. S.
Previous page
