The Hills and the Vale Part 7

There may be outlying places where such an excursion would be very difficult. Then harness the horses to the waggons, and take them to a picnic ten miles off on a noted hill or heath, or by the side of a river--somewhere for a change.

To return to more serious matters. Perhaps it would be as well if the first endeavour of such a local authority were addressed to the smaller matters that have been just alluded to, so that the public mind might become gradually accustomed to change, and prepared for greater innovations. Village drainage is notoriously defective.

Anyone who has walked through a village or hamlet must be perfectly well aware that there is no drainage, from the unpleasant odours that constantly a.s.sail the nostrils. It seems absurd, that with such an expanse of open country around, and with such an exposure to the fresh air, such foul substances should be permitted to contaminate the atmosphere. Each cottager either throws the sewage right into the road, and allows it to find its way as it can by the same channel as the rain-water; or, at best, flings it into the ditch at the back, which parts the garden from the agricultural land. Here it acc.u.mulates and soaks into the soil till the first storm of rain, which sweeps it away, but at the same time causes an abominable smell. It is positively unbearable to pa.s.s some cottages after a fresh shower.

Not unfrequently this ditch at the back of the garden runs down to the stream from which the cottagers draw their water, and the dipping-place may be close to the junction of the two. In places where there is a fall--when the cottages are built upon a slope--there can be little difficulty about drainage; but here steps in the question of water-supply, for drains of this character require flus.h.i.+ng. The supply of water must, therefore, in such places, precede the attempt at drainage. The disposal of the sewage, when collected, offers no difficulty. Its value is well understood, and it would be welcomed upon agricultural land. In the case of villages where there is no natural fall, and small hamlets and outlying cottages, the Moule system should be encouraged, especially as it affords a valuable product that can be transported to the allotment garden. A certain amount of most unreasonable prejudice exists against the introduction of this useful contrivance, which every means should be used to overcome. Now, most farm-houses stand apart, and in their own grounds, where any system of sewer is almost impossible. These are the very places where the Moule plan is available; and if agriculturists were to employ it, the poor would quickly learn its advantages. It would, perhaps, be even better than a public sewer in large villages, for a sewer entails an amount of supervision, repairs, and must have an outfall, and other difficulties, such as flus.h.i.+ng with water, and, if neglected, it engenders sewer-gas, which is more dangerous than the sewage itself.

The plan to be pursued depends entirely upon the circ.u.mstances of the place and the configuration of the ground. The subject of drainage connects itself with that of nuisances. This is, perhaps, the most difficult matter with which a local authority would have to deal. Nuisances are comparative. One man may not consider that to be a nuisance which may be an intolerable annoyance to his neighbour.

The keeping of pigs, for instance, is a troublesome affair. The cottager cannot be requested to give up so reasonable a habit; but there can be no doubt that the presence of a number of pigs in a village, in their dirty sties, and with their accompanying heaps of decaying garbage, is very offensive, and perhaps unhealthy. The pig itself, though commonly called a dirty animal, is not anything near so bad as has been represented. To convince oneself of that it is only necessary to visit farm-buildings which are well looked after.

The pigsties have no more smell than the stables, because the manure is removed, and no garbage is allowed to acc.u.mulate. It is the man who keeps the pig that makes it filthy and repulsive, and not the animal itself. Regular and _clean_ food has also much to do with it, such as barley-meal. Cottagers cannot afford barley-meal, but they certainly could keep their sties much cleaner. It does not seem possible to attack the nuisance with any other means than that of persuasion, unless some plan could be devised of keeping pigs in a common building outside the village; or at any rate, of having the manure taken outside at short intervals. Such nuisances as stagnant ponds and mud-filled ditches are more easily dealt with, because they are public, and interference with them would not touch upon any man's liberty of action. Stagnant ponds are of no use to anyone--even horses will not drink at them. The simple plan is to remove the mud, and then fill them up level with the ground, laying in drain-pipes to carry off the water which acc.u.mulated there. But some of these ponds could be utilized for the benefit of pa.s.sing horses and cattle. They are fed with a running stream, but, being no man's property, the pond becomes choked with mud and manure, and the small inflow of pure water is not enough to overcome the noisome exhalations. These should be cleaned out now and then, and, if possible, the bottom laid down with gravel or small stones, making the pond shallow at the edges, and for some distance in. Nothing is more valuable upon a country road than ponds of this character, into which a jaded horse can walk over his fetlock, and cool his feet at the same time that he refreshes his thirst. They are most welcome to cattle driven along the road.

The moral nuisances of drunkenness, gambling, and bad language at the corners of the streets and cross-roads had best be left to the law to deal with, though the influence of a local council in reproof and caution would undoubtedly be considerable. But if a bathing-place, an out-of-doors gymnasium, and such things, were established, these evils would almost disappear, because the younger inhabitants would have something to amuse themselves with; at present they have nothing whatever.

A local authority of this kind would confer a great boon upon the agricultural poor if they could renovate the old idea of a common.

Allotment grounds are most useful, but they do not meet every want.

The better cla.s.s of cottagers, who have contrived to save a little money, often try to keep a cow, and before the road surveyors grew so strict, they had little difficulty in doing so. But now the roads are so jealously and properly preserved purely for traffic, the cottager has no opportunity of grazing a cow or a donkey. It would not be possible in places where land is chiefly arable, nor in others where the meadow-land is let at a high rent, but still there are places where a common could be provided. It need not be the best land. The poorest would do. Those who graze should pay a small fee--so much per head per week. Such a field would be a great benefit, and an encouragement to those who were inclined to save.

In almost every parish there are a number of public charities. Many of these are unfortunately expressly devised for certain purposes, from which they cannot be diverted without much trouble and resorting to high authorities. But there are others left in a loose manner for the good of the poor, and the very origin of which is doubtful. Such are many of the pieces of land scattered about the country, the rent of which is paid to the churchwardens for the time being, in trust for the poor. At present these charities are dissipated in petty almsgiving, such as so much bread and a fourpenny-piece on a certain day of the year, a blanket or cloak at Christmas, and so on, the utility of which is more than doubtful.

Stories are currently believed of such four penny-pieces purchasing quarts of ale, and of such blankets being immediately sold to raise money for the same end. A village council would be able to suggest many ways in which the income of these charities could be far better employed. The giving of coal has already been subst.i.tuted in some places for the fourpenny-piece and blanket, which is certainly a sensible change; but if possible it would be better to avoid so-called charity altogether. Why should not the income of half a dozen villages lying adjacent to each other be concentrated upon a cottage hospital, or upon a hospital for lying-in women, which is one of the great desiderata in country places. Such inst.i.tutions afford charity of the highest and best character, without any degradation to the recipient. At the present moment the woman who has lost her reputation, and is confined with an illegitimate child, simply proceeds to the workhouse, where she meets with every attention skilled nurses and science can afford. The labourer's wife is left to languish in a close overcrowded room, and permitted to resume her household labours before she has properly recovered.

There is nothing more wretched than the confinement of an agricultural labourer's wife.

The health of villagers, notwithstanding the pure air, is often prejudiced by the overcrowding of cottages. This overcrowding may not be sufficiently great to render an appeal to the legal authorities desirable, and yet may be productive of very bad effects, both moral and physical. It is particularly the case where the cottages are the property of the labourer himself, and are held at a low quit-rent. The labourer cannot afford to rebuild the cottage, which has descended to him from his father, or possibly grandfather, and which was originally designed for one small family, but, in the course of years, three or four members of that family have acquired a right of residence in it. Of this right they are extremely tenacious, though it may be positively injurious to them.

As many as two married men, with wives and children, may crowd themselves into this dirty hovel, with a result of quarrelling and immorality that cannot be surpa.s.sed; in fact, some things that have happened in such places are not to be mentioned. Under the best circ.u.mstances it often happens that there are not sufficient cottages in a parish for the accommodation of the necessary workmen.

Complaints are continually arising, from no one so much as from the agriculturists, who can never depend upon their men remaining because of the deficiency of lodging. It is not often that the entire parish belongs to one landlord; frequently, there are four or five landlords, and a large number of freehold properties let to tenants. Nor even where parishes are more or less the property of one person, is it always practicable for the estate to bear the burden of additional cottage building. The cost of a cottage varies more, perhaps, than any other estimate, according to the size, the materials to be employed, and their abundance in the neighbourhood.

But it may be safely believed that the estimates given to landowners and others desirous of erecting cottages, very much exceed the sum at which they can be built. Deduct the hauling of materials--a considerable item--which could be done by the farmers themselves at odd times.

In some places the materials may be found upon an adjacent farm, and for such purposes might be had for a nominal sum. Altogether, a very fair cottage might be built for 100 to 150, according to the circ.u.mstances. These, of course, would not be ornamental houses with Gothic porches and elaborate gables; but plain cottages, and quite as comfortable. In round figures, four such places might be erected for 500.[3] For a large parish will contain as many as twenty farmers, and some more than that: 500 distributed between twenty is but 25 apiece, and this sum could be still further reduced if the landlords, the clergy, and the princ.i.p.al inhabitants are calculated to take an interest in the matter. Let it be taken at 20 each, and the product four cottages. As there are supposed to be twenty farms, it may be reckoned that eight or ten new cottages would be welcome.

This would vary with circ.u.mstances. In some places five would be sufficient. Ten would be the very highest number; and may be considered quite exceptional. Now for the repayment of the investment of 20. Four cottages at 2s. per week equals 20 per annum. At this rate in five-and-twenty years, each subscriber would be paid back his princ.i.p.al; say, after the manner of bonds, one redeemable every year, and drawn for by lot. An agriculturist who invests 100 or 150 in a cottage expects some interest upon his money; but he can afford to sink 20 for a few years in view of future benefit. But there are means by which the repayment could be much accelerated; _i.e._, by inducing the tenant of a cottage to pay a higher rent, and so become, after a time, the possessor of the tenement, in the same way as with building societies.

[3] This, of course, is upon the supposition that the materials are obtained at a nominal cost, and the hauling not charged for.

It may, however, be considered preferable that the cottages should remain the property of the village council--each member receiving back his original payment. This is thrown out merely as a suggestion; but this much is clear, that were there an organization of this kind there would be no material difficulty in the way of increasing the cottage accommodation. A number of gentlemen working together would overcome the want with ease. At all events, if they did not go so far as to erect new cottages, they might effect a great deal of improvement in repairing dilapidated places, and enlarging existing premises.

In thus rapidly sketching out the various ways in which a local village authority might encourage the growth and improvement of the place, it has been endeavoured to indicate, in a suggestive manner, the way in which such an authority might be established. It is not for one moment proposed that an application should be made to the Legislature for a special enactment enabling such councils to act with legal force. To such a course there would certainly arise the most vigorous opposition on the part of all cla.s.ses of the agricultural community, from landlord, tenant, and labourer alike.

There exists an irresistible dislike to any form of 'imperial'

interference, as is amply proved by the resistance offered to the School Board system, and by the comparative impotence of the rural sanitary authorities. People would rather suffer annoyance than call in an outside power. The species of local authority here indicated must be founded entirely upon the will of the inhabitants themselves; and its power be derived rather from acquiescence than from inherent force. In fact, the major part of its duties would not require any legal power. The allotment-garden, the cottage repair, the common, the bathing-place, reading-room, etc., would require no legal authority to render them useful and attractive. Neither is it probable that any serious opposition would be made to a system of drainage, and certainly none whatever to an improved water supply.

No force would be necessary, and the whole moral influence of landlord, and tenant, and clergy, would sway in the proposed direction. It has often been remarked that the agricultural cla.s.s--the tenant farmer--is the one least capable of combination, and there is a great deal of truth in the a.s.sertion of the lack of all cohesion, and united action. It must, however, be remembered that until very lately no kind of combination has been proposed, no attempt made to organize action. That, at least in local matters, agriculturists are capable of combination and united action has been proved by the strenuous exertions made to retain the voluntary school system, and also by the endeavours made for the restoration of village churches. If the total of the sums obtained for schools and for village church restoration could be ascertained, it would be found to amount to something very great; and in the case of the schools, at any rate, and to some degree in the case of restorations, the administration of the funds has rested upon the leading farmers a.s.sembled in committees. When once a number of agriculturists have formed a combination with an understood object, they are less liable to be thrown into disorder by factious differences amongst themselves than any other cla.s.s of men. They are willing to agree to anything reasonable, and do not persist in amendments just in order that a favourite crotchet may be gratified.

In other words, they are amenable to common sense and practical arguments.

There would be very little doubt of harmonious action if once such a combination was formed. It could be started in many ways--by the clergyman asking the tenants of the parish to meet him in the village school-room, and there giving a rapid sketch of the proposed organization; and if any landlord, or magistrate, or leading gentleman was present, the thing would be set on its legs on the spot. In most parishes there are one or more large tenant farmers who naturally take the lead in their own cla.s.s, and they would speedily obtain adherents to the movement. It would be as well, perhaps, if the attempt were made, for the promoters to draw up a species of circular for distribution in every house and cottage in the parish, explaining the objects of the a.s.sociation, and inviting co-operation on the part of rich and poor alike. Once a meeting was called together, and a committee appointed, the princ.i.p.al difficulty would be got over.

The next matter--in fact, the first matter for the consideration of such a committee--would be the method of raising funds. All legally-established bodies have powers of obtaining money, as by rates; but the example of the independent schools and church restorations has amply proved that money will be forthcoming for proper purposes without resort to compulsion. The abolition of Church-rates has not in any way tended to the degradation of the Church; perhaps, on the contrary, more has been done towards Church extension since that date than before. A voluntary rate is still collected in many places, and produces a considerable sum, the calculation being made upon the basis of the poor-rate a.s.sessment.

The objects of such a village a.s.sociation being eminently practical, devoid of any sectarian bearing and thoroughly local in application, there would probably be little difficulty in collecting a small voluntary rate for its support, even amongst the poorest of the population. The cottager would not grudge a few pence for objects in which he has an obvious interest, and which are close at home; but in the formation of the a.s.sociation it would, perhaps, be practicable to begin with a subscription of one guinea each from every member, the subscription of one guinea per annum endowing the giver with voting power at the meetings. If there were five-and-twenty farmers in a parish, there would be five-and-twenty guineas (it is not probable that any farmer would stand out from such a society), and five-and-twenty guineas would be quite sufficient to start the thing. Suppose the society commence with supplying additional allotment-grounds. They rent, say, eight acres at 2 10s. per acre, equalling 20 per annum; but they only expend 10 on rent for one half-year, because the other half will be paid by incoming tenants. The labour to be expended on the plot in making it tenable can hardly be reckoned, because, in all probability, it would be done by their own men at odd times.

Many places would not require draining at all, and it need not be done at starting, and the generality of fields are already drained.

So that about 15 would suffice to start the allotment-grounds, leaving 10 in hand to make a bathing-place with, or to erect a pump, or purchase hose or tank for water-supply. Here we have a considerable progress arrived at with one year's subscription only, not counting on any subscription from the landlord, or clergy, or resident gentlemen. The funds required are, in fact, not nearly so large as might be imagined. Most of these improvements, when once started, would last for some years without further outlay; the allotments would probably return a small income. It is not so necessary to do everything in one year. Add the sums collected on the low rate to the yearly subscription of the members, and there would probably be sufficient for every purpose, except that of cottage repairs or the erection of new cottages. Such more expensive matters would require shareholders investing larger sums; but the income already mentioned would probably enable all ordinary improvements to be carried out, even draining; and, after a year or two, a small reserve fund would even acc.u.mulate. It would, however, be important to bring the poorer cla.s.s to feel that these matters, in a manner, depended upon their own exertions. There might be a subscription of twopence a month for certain given objects, as the bathing-place, the water-tank, or other things in hand at the time; and it would probably be well responded to. They should also be invited to give their labour free of charge after farm work. In the case of important alterations affecting the whole village, such as drainage, they might be asked to meet the society in the school-room, and then let the matter be put to the vote. After a few months, there can be no doubt the labouring population would come to take a very animated interest in such proceedings. There is a great deal of common sense in the labourer, and once let him see the practical as opposed to the theoretical benefit, and his co-operation is certain.

The members of the society would have no trouble in electing a committee. There might be more than one committee to attend to different matters, as the allotment and the water-supply, because it would happen that one gentleman would have more practical knowledge of gardening, and another would have more acquaintance with the means of dealing with water, from the experience gained in his own water meadows. There should be a president of the society, a treasurer, and secretary; and a general meeting might take place once every two months, the committee meeting as circ.u.mstances dictated. Any member having a scheme to propose could draw up a short outline of his plan in writing, and submit it to the general meeting, when, if it met with favour, it could be handed over to a committee for execution.

Such an a.s.sociation might call itself the village Local Society. It would be distinct from all party politics; it would have nothing to do with individual disputes or grievances between landlord and tenant; it would most carefully disclaim all sectarian objects. It would meet in a friendly genial manner, and if a few bottles of sherry could be placed on the table the better. A formal, hard, entirely business-like meeting is undesirable and to be avoided. The affairs in progress should be discussed in a free, open manner, and without any attempt at set speeches, though to prevent mistakes propositions would have to be moved and seconded, and entered in a minute-book. Such a society would be the means of bringing gentlemen together from distant parts of the parish, and would lead to a more intimate social connection. It would have other uses than those for which it was formally inst.i.tuted. In the event of a serious outbreak of fever in the village, or any infectious disease, it might be of the very greatest utility in affording a.s.sistance to the poor, and in making arrangements for preventing the spread of infection by the plan of isolation. It might set apart a cottage for the reception of patients, and engage additional medical a.s.sistance.

The influence it would exercise in the village and parish would be very great, and might produce a decided improvement in the moral tone of the place. In the event of disaffection and agitation arising among the labouring cla.s.ses, it might be enabled to establish a reasonable compromise, and, in time, a good many little petty disputes among the poor would be referred to the society for arbitration.

In large villages it might be found advantageous to establish a ladies' committee in connection with such a society. There are many matters in which the ladies are better agents, and possess a special knowledge. It may, perhaps, be thought rather an advanced idea; but would not some instruction in cookery be extremely useful to the agricultural girl just growing up into womanhood? The cooking she learns at home is simply no cooking at all. It is hardly possible to induce the elder women to change the habits of a lifetime, but the girls, fast growing up, would be eager to learn. With the increase of wages, the labourer has obtained a certain addition to his fare, and can occasionally afford some of the cheaper pieces of butcher's meat. But the women have no idea of utilizing these pieces in the most economical and savoury ways. Plentiful as vegetables are at times, they are only used in the coa.r.s.est manner. The ladies'

committee would also have important work before them in boarding out the orphan children from the Union, and also in endeavouring to find employment for the great girls who play about the village, getting them into service, and so on. In the distribution of charities (if charities there must be), ladies are far more efficient than men, and they may exercise an influence in moral matters where no one else could interfere. If there is any charity which deserves to be a.s.sisted by this local society, it is the cheapening of coals in the winter. Already in some villages the princ.i.p.al farmers combine to purchase a good stock of coal at the beginning of winter, and as they buy it in large quant.i.ties they get it somewhat cheaper. Their teams and waggons haul it to the village, and in the dead of winter it is retailed to the cottagers at less than cost price. This is a most useful inst.i.tution, and can hardly be called a charity. The fact that this has been done is a proof that organization for objects of local benefit is quite possible in rural parishes.

Landowners and resident gentlemen would naturally take an interest in such proceedings, and may very properly be asked to subscribe; but the actual execution of the plans decided on should be left in the hands of tenant-farmers, who have a direct interest, and who come into daily contact with the lower cla.s.s. As a means of adding to their funds, the society could give popular entertainments of reading and singing, which have often been found effective in raising money for the purchase of a new harmonium, and which, at the same time, afford a harmless gratification. It would, perhaps, be better if such a society were to keep itself distinct from any project of church restoration, or even from the school question, because it is most essential that they should be free from the slightest suspicion of leaning towards any party. Their authority must be based upon universal consent. They might perform a useful task if they could induce the cottagers to insure their goods and chattels, or in any way a.s.sist them to do so. Cottages are exceptionably liable to conflagration, and after the place is burnt, there is piteous weeping and wailing, and general begging to replace the lost furniture and bedding. There is much to be done also in the matter of savings. It seems to be pretty well demonstrated by the history of benefit clubs and the calculations of actuaries, that the agricultural labourer, out of his amount of wages, cannot put by a sufficient monthly contribution to enable him to receive a pension when he becomes old and infirm. But that is not the slightest reason why he should not save small sums year by year, which, in course of time, would amount to a nice little thing to fall back upon in case of sickness or accident. There are many aged and deserving men who have worked all their lives in one place and almost upon one farm, and, at last, are reduced to the pitiful allowance of the parish, occasionally supplemented by a friendly gift. These cases are very painful to witness, and are felt to be wrong by the tenant-farmers.

But one person cannot entirely support them; and often it happens that the man who would have done his best is dead--the old employer for whom they worked so many years is gone before them to his rest.

If there were but a little organization such cases would not pa.s.s unnoticed.

Certain it is that the tendency of the age, and the progress of recent events, indicates the coming of a time when organization of some kind in rural districts will be necessary. The labour-agitation was a lesson of this kind. There are upheaving forces at work among the agricultural lower cla.s.s as well as in the lower cla.s.s of towns; a flow of fresh knowledge, and larger aspirations, which require guidance and supervision, lest they run to riot and excess. An organization of the character here indicated would meet the difficulties of the future, and meet them in the best of ways; for while possessing power to improve and to reform, it would have no hated odour of compulsion. The suggestions here put forth are, of course, all more or less tentative. They sketch an outline, the filling up of which must fall upon practical men, and which must depend greatly upon the circ.u.mstances of the locality.

THE IDLE EARTH

The bare fallows of a factory are of short duration, and occur at lengthened intervals. There are the Sat.u.r.day afternoons--four or five hours' shorter time; there are the Sundays--fifty-two in number; a day or two at Christmas, at Midsummer, at Easter.

Fifty-two Sundays, plus fifty-two half-days on Sat.u.r.days; eight days more for _bona-fide_ holidays--in all, eighty-six days on which no labour is done. This is as near as may be just one quarter of the year spent in idleness. But how fallacious is such a calculation!

for overtime and night-work make up far more than this deficient quarter; and therefore it may safely be said that man works the whole year through, and has no bare fallow. But earth--idle earth--on which man dwells, has a much easier time of it. It takes nearly a third of the year out in downright leisure, doing nothing but inchoating; a slow process indeed, and one which all the agricultural army have of late tried to hasten, with very indifferent success. Winter seed sown in the fall of the year does not come to anything till the spring; spring seed is not reaped till the autumn is at hand. But it will be argued that this land is not idle, for during those months the seed is slowly growing--absorbing its const.i.tuent parts from the atmosphere, the earth, the water; going through astonis.h.i.+ng metamorphoses; outdoing the most wonderful laboratory experiments with its untaught, instinctive chemistry. All true enough; and hitherto it has been a.s.sumed that the ultimate product of these idle months is sufficient to repay the idleness; that in the _coup_ of the week of reaping there is a dividend recompensing the long, long days of development. Is it really so?

This is not altogether a question which a practical man used to City formulas of profit and loss might ask. It is a question to which, even at this hour, farmers themselves--most unpractical of men--are requiring an answer. There is a cry arising throughout the country that farms do not pay; that a man with a moderate 400 acres and a moderate 1,000 of his own, with borrowed money added, cannot get a reasonable remuneration from those acres. These say they would sooner be hotel-keepers, tailors, grocers--anything but farmers.

These are men who have tried the task of subduing the stubborn earth, which is no longer bountiful to her children. Much reason exists in this cry, which is heard at the market ordinary, in the lobby, at the club meetings--wherever agriculturists congregate, and which will soon force itself out upon the public. It is like this.

Rents have risen. Five s.h.i.+llings per acre makes an enormous difference, though nominally only an additional 100 on 400 acres.

But as in agricultural profits one must not reckon more than 8 per cent., this 5s. per acre represents nearly another 1,000 which must be invested in the business, and which must be made to return interest to pay the additional rent. If that cannot be done, then it represents a dead 100 per annum taken out of the agriculturist's pocket.

Then--labour, the great agricultural _crux_. If the occupier pays 3s. per week more to seven men, that adds more than another 50 per annum to his outgoings, to meet which you must somehow make your acres represent another 500. Turnpikes fall in, and the roads are repaired at the ratepayers' cost. Compulsory education--for it is compulsory in reality, since it compels voluntary schools to be built--comes next, and as generally the village committee mull matters, and have to add a wing, and rebuild, and so forth, till they get in debt, there grows up a rate which is a serious matter, not by itself, but added to other things. Just as in great factories they keep accounts in decimals because of the vast mult.i.tude of little expenses which are in the aggregate serious--each decimal is equivalent to a rusty nail or so--here on our farm threepence or fourpence in the pound added to threepence or sixpence ditto for voluntary Church-rate, puts an appreciable burden on the man's back.

The tightness, however, does not end here; the belt is squeezed closer than this. No man had such long credit as the yeoman of yore (thirty years ago is 'of yore' in our century). Butcher and baker, grocer, tailor, draper, all gave him unlimited credit as to _time_.

As a rule, they got paid in the end; for a farmer is a fixture, and does not have an address for his letters at one place and live in another. But modern trade manners are different. The trader is himself pressed. Compet.i.tion galls his heel. He has to press upon his customers, and in place of bills sent in for payment once a year, and actual cash transfer in three, we have bills punctually every quarter, and due notice of county court if cheques are not sent at the half-year. So that the agriculturist wants more ready cash; and as his returns come but once a year, he does not quite see the fairness of having to swell other men's returns four times in the same period. Still a step further, and a few words will suffice to describe the increased cost of all the materials supplied by these tradesmen. Take coals, for instance. This is a fact so patent that it stares the world in the face. A farmer, too, nowadays has a natural desire to live as other people in his station of life do. He cannot reconcile himself to rafty bacon, cheese, radishes, turnip-tops, homespun cloth, smock frocks. He cannot see why his girls should milk the cows or wheel out manure from the yards any more than the daughters of tradesmen; neither that his sons should say 'Ay' and 'Noa,' and exhibit a total disregard of grammar and ignorance of all social customs. The piano, he thinks, is quite as much in its place in his cool parlour as in the stuffy so-called drawing-room at his grocer's in the petty town hard by, where they are so particular to distinguish the social ranks of 'professional tradesmen' from common tradesmen. Here in all this, even supposing it kept down to economical limits, there exists a considerable margin of expenditure greater than in our forefathers' time. True, wool is dearer, meat dearer; but to balance that put the increased cost of artificial manure and artificial food--two things no farmer formerly bought--and do not forget that the seasons rule all things, and are quite as capricious as ever, and when there is a bad season the loss is much greater than it used to be, just as the foundering of an ironclad costs the nation more than the loss of a frigate.

Experience every day brings home more and more the fatal truth that moderate farms do not pay, and there are even ominous whispers about the 2,000 acres system. The agriculturist says that, work how he may, he only gets 8 per cent. per annum; the tradesman, still more the manufacturer, gets only 2 per cent. each time, but he turns his money over twenty times a year, and so gets 40 per cent. per annum.

Eight per cent. is a large dividend on one transaction, but it is very small for a whole year--a year, the one-thirtieth of a man's whole earning period, if we take him to be in a business at twenty-five, and to be in full work till fifty-five, a fair allowance. Now, why is it that this cry arises that agriculture will not pay? and why is it that the farmer only picks up 8 per cent.?

The answer is simple enough. It is because the earth is idle a third of the year. So far as actual cash return is concerned, one might say it was idle eleven out of the twelve months. But that is hardly fair. Say a third of the year.

The earth does not continue yielding a crop day by day as the machines do in the manufactory. The nearest approach to the manufactory is the dairy, whose cows send out so much milk per diem; but the cows go dry for their calves. Out of the tall chimney shaft there floats a taller column of dark smoke hour after hour; the vast engines puff and snort and labour perhaps the whole twenty-four hours through; the drums hum round, the shafts revolve perpetually, and each revolution is a penny gained. It may be only steel-pen making--pens, common pens, which one treats as of no value and wastes by dozens; but the iron-man thumps them out hour after hour, and the thin stream of daily profit swells into a n.o.ble river of gold at the end of the year. Even the pill people are fortunate in this: it is said that every second a person dies in this huge world of ours. Certain it is that every second somebody takes a pill; and so the millions of globules disappear, and so the profit is nearer 8 per cent. per hour than 8 per cent. per annum. But this idle earth takes a third of the year to mature its one single crop of pills; and so the agriculturist with his slow returns cannot compete with the quick returns of the tradesman and manufacturer. If he cannot compete, he cannot long exist; such is the modern law of business.

As an ill.u.s.tration, take one large meadow on a dairy farm; trace its history for one year, and see what an idle workshop this meadow is.

Call it twenty acres of first-cla.s.s land at 2 15s. per acre, or 55 per annum. Remember that twenty acres is a large piece on which some millions multiplied by millions of cubic feet of air play on a month, and on which an incalculable amount of force in the shape of sunlight is poured down in the summer. January sees this plot of a dull, dirty green, unless hidden by snow; the dirty green is a short, juiceless herbage. The ground is as hard as a brick with the frost. We will not stay now to criticize the plan of carting out manure at this period, or dwell on the great useless furrows. Look carefully round the horizon of the twenty acres, and there is not an animal in sight, not a single machine for making money, not a penny being turned. The cows are all in the stalls. February comes, March pa.s.ses; the herbage grows slowly; but still no machines are introduced, no pennies roll out at the gateways. The farmer may lean on the gate and gaze over an empty workshop, twenty acres big, with his hands in his pockets, except when he pulls out his purse to pay the hedge-cutters who are clearing out the ditches, the women who have been stone-picking, and the carters who took out the manure, half of which stains the drains, while the volatile part mixes with the atmosphere. This is highly profitable and gratifying. The man walks home, hears his daughter playing the piano, picks up the paper, sees himself described as a brutal tyrant to the labourer, and ten minutes afterwards in walks the collector of the voluntary rate for the village school, which educates the labourers' children.

April arrives; gra.s.s grows rapidly. May comes; gra.s.s is now long.

But still not one farthing has been made out of that twenty acres.

Five months have pa.s.sed, and all this time the shafts in the manufactories have been turning, and the quick coppers acc.u.mulating.

Now it is June, and the mower goes to work; then the haymakers, and in a fortnight if the weather be good, a month if it be bad, the hay is ricked. Say it cost 1 per acre to make the hay and rick it--_i.e._, 20--and by this time half the rent is due, or 27 10s.

= total expenditure (without any profit as yet), 47 10s., exclusive of stone-picking, ditch-cleaning, value of manure, etc. This by the way. The five months' idleness is the point at present. June is now gone. If the weather be showery the sharp-edged gra.s.s may spring up in a fortnight to a respectable height; but if it be a dry summer--and if it is not a dry summer the increased cost of haymaking runs away with profit--then it may be fully a month before there is anything worth biting. Say at the end of July (one more idle month) twenty cows are turned in, and three horses. One cannot estimate how long they may take to eat up the short gra.s.s, but certain it is that the beginning of November will see that field empty of cattle again; and fortunate indeed the agriculturist who long before that has not had to 'fodder' (feed with hay) at least once a day. Here, then, are five idle months in spring, one in summer, two in winter; total, eight idle months. But, not to stretch the case, let us allow that during a part of that time, though the meadow is idle, its produce--the hay--is being eaten and converted into milk, cheese and b.u.t.ter, or meat, which is quite correct; but, even making this allowance, it may safely be said that the meadow is absolutely idle for one-third of the year, or four months. That is looking at the matter in a mere pounds, s.h.i.+llings, and pence light.

Now look at it in a broader, more national view. Does it not seem a very serious matter that so large a piece of land should remain idle for that length of time? It is a reproach to science that no method of utilizing the meadow during that eight months has been discovered. To go further, it is very hard to require of the agriculturist that he should keep pace with a world whose maxims day by day tend to centralize and concentrate themselves into the one canon, Time is Money, when he cannot by any ingenuity get his machinery to revolve more than once a year. In the old days the farmer belonged to a distinct cla.s.s, a very isolated and independent cla.s.s, little affected by the progress or retrogression of any other cla.s.s, and not at all by those waves of social change which sweep over Europe. Now the farmer is in the same position as other producers: the fall or rise of prices, the compet.i.tion of foreign lands, the waves of panic or monetary tightness, all tell upon him quite as much as on the tradesman. So that the cry is gradually rising that the idle earth will not pay.

On arable land it is perhaps even more striking. Take a wheat crop, for instance. Without going into the cost and delay of the three years of preparation under various courses for the crop, take the field just before the wheat year begins. There it lies in November, a vast brown patch, with a few rooks here and there hopping from one great lump to another; but there is nothing on it--no machine turning out materials to be again turned into money. On the contrary, it is very probable that the agriculturist may be sowing money on it, scarifying it with steam ploughing-engines, tearing up the earth to a great depth in order that the air may penetrate and the frost disintegrate the strong, hard lumps. He may have commenced this expensive process as far back as the end of August, for it is becoming more and more the custom to plough up directly after the crop is removed. All November, December, January, and not a penny from this broad patch, which may be of any size from fifteen to ninety acres, lying perfectly idle. Sometimes, indeed, persons who wish to save manure will grow mustard on it and plough it in, the profit of which process is extremely dubious. At the latter end of February or beginning of March, just as the season is early or late, dry or wet, in goes the seed--another considerable expense. Then April, May, June, July are all absorbed in the slow process of growth--a necessary process, of course, but still terribly slow, and not a penny of ready-money coming in. If the seed was sown in October, as is usual on some soils, the effect is the same--the crop does not arrive till next year's summer sun s.h.i.+nes. In August the reaper goes to work, but even then the corn has to be threshed and sent to market before there is any return. Here is a whole year spent in elaborating one single crop, which may, after all, be very unprofitable if it is a good wheat year, and the very wheat over which such time and trouble have been expended may be used to fat beasts, or even to feed pigs. All this, however, and the great expense of preparation, though serious matters enough in themselves, are beside our immediate object. The length of time the land is useless is the point. Making every possible allowance, it is not less than one-third of the year--four months out of the twelve. For all practical--_i.e._, monetary--purposes it is longer than that. No wonder that agriculturists aware of this fact are so anxious to get as much as possible out of their one crop--to make the one revolution of their machinery turn them out as much money as possible. If their workshop must be enforcedly idle for so long, they desire that when in work there shall be full blast and double tides. Let the one crop be as heavy as it can. Hence the agitation for compensatory clauses, enabling the tenant to safely invest all the capital he can procure in the soil. How else is he to meet the increased cost of labour, of rent, of education, of domestic materials; how else maintain his fair position in society? The demand is reasonable enough; the one serious drawback is the possibility that, even with this a.s.sistance, the idle earth will refuse to move any faster.

We have had now the experience of many sewage-farms where the culture is extremely 'high.' It has been found that these farms answer admirably where the land is poor--say, sandy and porous--but on fairly good soil the advantage is dubious, and almost limited to growing a succession of rye-gra.s.s crops. After a season or two of sewage soaking the soil becomes so soft that in the winter months it is unapproachable. Neither carts nor any implements can be drawn over it; and then in the spring the utmost care has to be exercised to keep the liquid from touching the young plants, or they wither up and die. Sewage on gra.s.s lands produces the most wonderful results for two or three years, but after that the herbage comes so thick and rank and 'strong' that cattle will not touch it; the landlord begins to grumble, and complains that the land, which was to have been improved, has been spoilt for a long time to come. Neither is it certain that the employment of capital in other ways will lead to a continuous increase of profit. There are examples before our eyes where capital has been unsparingly employed, and upon very large areas of land, with most disappointing results. In one such instance five or six farms were thrown into one; straw, and manure, and every aid lavishly used, till a fabulous number of sheep and other stock was kept; but the experiment failed. Many of the farms were again made separate holdings, and gra.s.s laid down in the place of glowing cornfields. Then there is another instance, where a gentleman of large means and a cultivated and business mind, called in the a.s.sistance of the deep plough, and by dint of sheer subsoil ploughing grew corn profitably several years in succession. But after a while he began to pause, and to turn his attention to stock and other aids. It is not for one moment contended that the use of artificial manure, of the deep plough, of artificial food, and other improvements will not increase the yield, and so the profit of the agriculturist. It is obvious that they do so. The question is, Will they do so to an extent sufficient to repay the outlay? And, further, will they do so sufficiently to enable the agriculturist to meet the ever-increasing weight which presses on him? It would seem open to doubt. One thing appears to have been left quite out of sight by those gentlemen who are so enthusiastic about compensation for unexhausted improvements, and that is, if the landlord is to be bound down so rigidly, and if the tenant really is going to make so large a profit, most a.s.suredly the rents will rise very considerably. How then? Neither the sewage system, nor the deep plough, nor the artificial manure has, as yet, succeeded in overcoming the _vis inertiae_ of the idle earth. They cause an increase in the yield of the one revolution of the agriculturist machine per annum; but they do not cause the machine to revolve twice or three times. Without a decrease in the length of this enforced idleness any very great increase of profit does not seem possible. What would any manufacturer think of a business in which he was compelled to let his engines rest for a third of the year?

Would he be eager to sink his capital in such an enterprise?

The practical man will, of course, exclaim that all this is very true, but Nature is Nature, and must have its way, and it is useless to expect more than one crop per annum, and any talk of three or four crops is perfectly visionary. 'Visionary,' by the way, is a very favourite word with so-called practical men. But the stern logic of figures, of pounds, s.h.i.+llings, and pence, proves that the present condition of affairs cannot last much longer, and they are the true 'visionaries' who imagine that it can. This enormous loss of time, this idleness, must be obviated somehow. It is a question whether the millions of money at present sunk in agriculture are not a dead loss to the country; whether they could not be far more profitably employed in developing manufacturing industries, or in utilizing for home consumption the enormous resources of Southern America and Australasia; whether we should not get more to eat, and cheaper, if such was the case. Such a low rate of interest as is now obtained in agriculture--and an interest by no means secure either, for a bad season may at any time reduce it, and even a too good season--such a state of things is a loss, if not a curse. It is questionable whether the million or so of labourers representing a potential amount of force almost incalculable, and the thousands of young farmers throbbing with health and vigour, eager _to do_, would not return a far larger amount of good to the world and to themselves if, instead of waiting for the idle earth at home to bring forth, they were transported bodily to the broad savannahs and prairies, and were sending to the mother-country innumerable s.h.i.+ploads of meat and corn--unless, indeed, we can discover some method by which our idle earth shall be made to labour more frequently. This million or so of labourers and these thousands of young, powerfully made farmers literally do nothing at all for a third the year but wait, wait for the idle earth. The of strength, the will, the vigour latent in them is wasted. They do not enjoy this waiting by any means. The young agriculturist chafes under the delay, and is eager _to do_. They can hunt and course hares, 'tis true, but that is feeble excitement indeed, and feminine in comparison with the serious work which brings in money.

The idleness of arable and pasture land is as nothing compared to the idleness of the wide, rolling downs. These downs are of immense extent, and stretch through the very heart of the country. They maintain sheep, but in how small a proportion to the acreage! In the spring and summer the short herbage is cropped by the sheep; but it is short, and it requires a large tract to keep a moderate flock. In the winter the down is left to the hares and fieldfares. It has just as long a period of absolute idleness as the arable and pasture land, and when in work the yield is so very, very small.

After all, the very deepest ploughing is but scratching the surface.