A most unusually able and temperate contributor to the St.
James's Gazette, who has been sending a series of papers on the village question, says that even in Northumberland the labourers are "stealing away to the towns." The farmers are ready to pay them 21s. a week in coin if they will give a month's notice; there are no strikes, and they themselves admit that they are better off on the land ; but go they will. " I put the question to a very intelligent ploughman, whether his companions are really better off as porters, policemen, bar-tenders, &c., in Newcastle, and his answer was, A sight worse.' But still he would follow their example. For whether it is destined to pass away or to endure, there is at present in the rural population a hatred of field-work and country-life so exceedingly strong, that they would sooner risk starvation in the streets than endure the labour and the dullness of the fields." The simple truth is, that ambition is waking in them, and an ambitious villager goes, whether to town, or to a Colony, or to a navvy's wandering work. So did his fathers in Jutland; so will his sons in Colorado. Small-farming means working all day and every day, to be at the mercy of the weather at last.
Previous page
