WANTED—FOUR PLOUGHMEN !
On the same day of last week I read, in the London Press, that agricultural labourers had diminished at a greater rate than ever before, and in the local rural Press that there was a dearth of ploughmen. In the one issue there were four advertisements for ploughmen and a number for other sorts of land workers. It is assumed in urban comment that the decrease is due solely to the surrender of arable land by farmers who cannot make it pay. But a secondary cause is the decay of the craft of land-worker. Thatchers (except one group of Norfolk thatchers), ploughmen, oak-renders, horse-keepers, hedgers and dithhers, rick-builders, mowers (with the scythe), handymen who understand machines, •a're all hard to fmd. The curious result follows that the reductiOn in employment does not coincide with unemployment, so far as the farming industry is concerned. Farmers, though reducing the 'tali of their labourers fOr economic reasons, have more and more difficulty in finding good men. The only sohition is not, as some farmers claim, a lower wage, but a higher. The most serious loss .to fanning is the flight of the More energetic and more intelligent labourer. A good labourer with good vines is as certainly 'superior to an ill-paid auto- maton, as good land rented high is better than poor land at a gift. Higher wages. or more small-h seem iildings sev the only alternatives if we are to keep the land cidtivated and the country villages populous.
W. BEACH THOMAS.'
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