234 ON PROVIDING A SUFFICIENT SUPPLY OF LABOUR 



keep odds and ends in order. The cattleman would in spring 

 turn in to a pair of horses liberated from the three-yoke of the 

 doul^le-furrows. The lads would cart grain and turnips in winter, 

 harrow or set potatoes in spring, hoe and weed in sunnner, and 

 lift and cart in harvest, and in potatoe-lifting cart or lift a drill 

 as required. 



On a dairy farm a dairyman will replace the shepherd, but, of 

 course, witli a house near the steading, and the cattleman would 

 by turns undertake the shepherding and odd work generally. 

 But, as dairymen usually are chary of allowing their families to 

 work in the fields, and as they are within the highest department 

 of skilled farm labour, at least £35 may be added to the labour 

 bill with dairy economy. It is considered that a farm under 150 

 acres is not the kind embraced in the report, for there the press 

 of work is usually nominal; but still there are features connected 

 with the laljour of a small holding which — more especially when 

 a cry is raised for a peasantry owning and farming small holdings 

 — demand a passing notice. The work is, as a rule, eqiuilly well, 

 sometimes better, executed, and even in better season, by the 

 family of the farmer ; l)ut it cannot by any means be reckoned a 

 cheap source of labour. If it is cheaper, then it would require to 

 V)e proved that it takes less to dress and provide pocket-mone}- 

 for the farmer's family than would pay hired servants to replace 

 them — a proposition"' wdiich cannot be established. In the way of 

 food there can be no preference — that would admit a worse posi- 

 tion for tlie family of a small farmer than the servants of larger 

 ones. But, on the other liand, it is well established that grande 

 rather than petite culture is the powerful means of production, 

 and with the great proportion of our population which are en- 

 gaged in manufactures and commerce the mind will more readily 

 drift in the direction of large and cheap production than of 

 greater comfort to a section of those engaged in it. 



But improvements can also still be engrafted on the best of 

 our systems of labour on the farm, with a view of being better 

 able to cope with the press in busy seasons. There is no time in 

 wdiich the press is greater, or the rate of wages higher, than in 

 harvest, although the work done per labourer is neither harder 

 nor of longer daily hours than at some other times of the yeai-. 

 Partly from an idea clothed in superstition, paitly from the hard 

 labour of the days of the reaping hook, harvest labour is unduly 

 elevated in the scale of wages. 



To alter this almost stupid custom employers must make a 

 decided effort, and there is no more effectual method than erect- 

 ing sheds for the grain crops, and thus getting rid of the skilled 

 liarvest hands. These could be replaced by a cheaper unskilled 

 set, and the cost of the sheds is well met by the saving of the 

 extra labour and waste which stacking involves. The demand 



