THE REDUCTION OF THE RURAL POP ULATION.
THERE is a process at work in the English rural districts which may yet affect the tenure more than all the arguments of all the philosophers, and that is the slow but steady emptying of the strictly agricultural villages. The local papers are beginning to publish the Returns of the Census, and from every part of England the same result is reported,— that the cities are growing, and the hamlets dying away. Alike from counties like Lincolnshire and Somersctshire, where agriculture is the mainstay of the people ; counties like Lancashire, full of manufactures ; and counties like Essex, a great garden for London, the same report is received,—ham- lets by the hundred show a decreased population. Places with 400 people in 1871 show 300 in 1881, the regular rate of fall varying from ten per cent, to thirty, or even more, The total reduction in strictly rural villages will probably rise as high as one-fifth ; and as the same result was observed in the last Census, the process of depletion must be accepted as continual. Indeed, it is not yet certain that it is not progressive. Very careful observers are inclined to believe that the attraction of the cities, of America, and of the Colonies increases—the emigration this year will, it is known from the figures already recorded, exceed all precedent—that the young and strong men withdraw from the villages, and that as the older generation drop off, the decline will become much more marked to the enumera- tors' eyes. One such observer, who has inspected part of Norfolk with a special view to this question, tells us that the difference ss sufficient to strike even casual travellers, and that after an experience of twenty years he should say broadly that the pick of the younger generation were giving up agricultural labour. "Whole hamlets are populated by the old."
Part of this decline is due, no doubt, to the increasing use of machinery, but only part. Threshers have gone and ploughmen, and many of those strong labourers who looked to their six weeks' work as reapers to raise their average wages to a reasonable level, and pay off their small shopkeeping accounts. The farmers, too, pressed by competition and declining profits, have reduced their wage-sheet as low as possible by dismissing useless hands ; while in the last two years the number of farms left empty, and the change in some districts from arable to pasture, must have forced thousands of families into the towns. There has been a great effort to reduce cost, a great reluctance to employ labour on any work not actually indispensable, and a bitterness between employers and em- ployed arising from the agricultural strikes, which have all tended to empty the cottages. These causes, however, have been supplemented by another more permanent and, we aro inclined to believe, more efficacious, an increase in the dislike for agricultural labour under existing conditions. There is no doubt that thee) is, in this country, reason for that dis- like. As compared with other handicraftsmen in non-sedentary trades, the labourers are badly paid, work through long hours exposed to all weathers, are less regularly employed, the winter offering little occupation, and, above all, have few chances of bettering themselves. If they work from the age of eighteen to sixty for just masters they can hardly save enough to avoid the workhouse, and of the chances present in all other trades there are practically none. The farm labourer lives and dies a labourer. He cannot stock a farm, he cannot buy a freehold, and ho rarely obtains oven a sufficiency of rented land to earn a living off it. He is fortunate if by his children's help and the kindness of an old employer and a small out-door allowance from the Union, he can just keep off an application for admission to the House." The young, as education spreads, feel this side of their position very keenly, and, if they are energetic men, choose one of three courses, the life of country artisans—blacksmiths, cart-builders, masons, machine-tenders, and the like ; work in the towns, where life, if hard, is more lively and gregarious ; and emigration to America or the Southern Colonies. The first course of the three is probably the happiest, country artisans in full work being often unusually well off ; but the positions open are few, and the draft towards the towns is strong, as is evid- enced by the returns, stronger than it is towards emigration, though it is noticed that when once a village has taken to the latter resource, the old names rapidly disappear. The labouring families are influenced by letters from their kinsfolk, and they follow each other silently, but sometimes very quickly indeed. The grand drain, however, is into the towns, every town, to speak broadly, increasing at a pace far beyond its increase from the birth-rate, Whether there is growing among the labourers any distaste for the kind of toil exacted, apart from its conditions as to reward, we are unable to decide, and for ourselves should doubt it. The farmers, however, in some districts certainly believe this, and attribute it to education, and their view is supported in part by information from America. There are few born Americans who work on the land for wages, the emigrants dislike to stay working, and the rate of pay for hired labour, especially round the towns, has grown excessive. A singularly intelligent American correspondent of the Birmingham Post declares that near the eities the agricultural labourer asks "double wages," and even if that is an accidental and local exaggeration, there can be no doubt that in the Eastern States agricul- ture is falling more and more out of favour, and the little farmers and their men retreating upon the towns. We quoted only very recently a quantity of American evidence upon that subject, almost the only strong evidence we know against peasant-proprietorship, as exhausting the soil. What- ever the motive, however, the fact is undoubted that in England the supply of good farm labour declines,—and the decline must have one of two results, Either agricultural wages must increase, and increase decidedly, or the system of cultivation must be so reorganised that the man who works shall, as on the Continent and in the American West, feel that he is labouring for himself. Any form of labour can be obtained for tempting wages, and it does not appear that the distaste for agricultural labour is felt when the labourer is the owner or part-owner of the soil. Man carts. muck for himself readily enough. All over Europe the peasants work harder than English labourers, work on for generations, and give for small patches of land extravagant and ever-increas- ing prices,—prices which show that they want the land itself, rather than profit from it. It is true French and Swiss writers both affirm that the best of the peasants' children drift away to the towns and to other countries, and that the peasants, there- fore, rather dread education ; but there is no visible diminution in the supply, and the truth probably is that only those who are drawn towards intellectual work, or sedentary work, habitually quit the fields. Even in Switzerland, where emi- gration is at once a habit and a tradition, no farm, however small, if worth cultivating at all, is ever left uncultivated, and the smaller plots are not believed to be aggregating in few hands. The regularity of the peasant's life, its perfect inde- pendence, and the sense of creative work which attaches to agriculture as much as to gardening, prove attractions which outweigh all the disagreeables inherent in the pursuit. If the process of depletion goes on in England, some such attrac- tion will have to be provided here. Machinery cannot do all farm work, or much of it, except upon large farms ; and it is the large farms, not the small, which are being thrown upon the landlords' hands. Combination will effect everything by-and-by, but for combination the farmers are not yet prepared. A high rate of wages, the farmer says, and says for the moment with perfect truth, he cannot pay, and what resource except owner- ship, complete or partial, remains ? The resistance to any such change will, of course, be most vigorous, as is the resist- ance to any social change ; but as the rural population thins, and the system becomes daily less profitable, the desire to enfranchise the soil, and so at least allow the problem to work itself out, will grow more strong. The Irish Land Question just now stops the way, and, moreover, somewhat distracts English opinion, the difficulty in Ireland being radically different from the difficulty here ; but we expect before long to hear a cry come up from the English counties to which no Legislature can be deaf, and which will insist that at all events the transfer of the soil, in any patch, however small, shall be effected cheaply, swiftly, and with a certainty that the article sold and paid for is safely bought.
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