26o 



The Country Gcnilcmaiis Mazaziiie 



as at present? Is it in reaFon to expect 

 that employers will, when forced to work 

 their farms as factories of meat and corn, 

 obtaining their hands as mill-owners or con- 

 tractors do from the whole market of the 

 country, as they would by their dead plant, 

 with no other tie to them than one formed 

 for the occasion, have that personal interest 

 in those they employ which used to exist ? 



As I have already said, this is parochial 

 revolution. It is a direct obliteration of all 

 the kindly local bred elements which have 

 hitherto, even on their low wages, done more 

 for the labourers than I fear they are as yet 

 aware. That which was but an occasional, 

 to me always a painful, sight, the Lady-day 

 or Michaelmas apparition of waggons loaded 

 with the very promiscuous burden of a 

 broken-up cottage home, is it to become a 

 thing of course ? Is the imported labourer 

 to become a mere temporary farm hand ? 

 Are cottage, homes to be mere lodgings, 

 the tenants of which Avorking on the suffer- 

 ance of their " Unions " are to be viewed 

 with suspicion, watched at their work that its 

 full measure may be done, treated with the 

 •chilled local sympathy which may not deny 

 all help in an hour of need, but which will 

 afford it as to strangers ? 



In advanced years — your older readers 

 know how many of mine were spent in urging 

 a better treatment of the labourer — by no 

 means questioning the legal right of the 

 labourers to " strike " for higher pay — I yet 

 see but too clearly, that in now gaining this, 

 they have lost almost all its worth in the 

 necessarily changed social condition v.'hich 

 must follow. I am more than ever con- 

 vinced I did not ride my hobby too hard, 

 when for many years I did battle with those 

 who paid their men too little, and the land- 

 owners who housed them so ill. In vain did 

 I warn, again and again, that a day would 

 come when, as with " the trades " so with 

 these labourers, they would unite — and 

 uniting gain the attention to their condition 

 all other means seemed to fail to obtain. 



All concerned have the greatest reason 

 to be thankful that hitherto these strikes 

 have been peaceably conducted, I fully ex- 



pected they would. The employers, on the 

 whole, deserve the greatest credit for the 

 way in which they, under no slight provoca- 

 tion, met them. It is beyond all dispute that 

 the low wages in many counties utterly 

 pauperized the whole body of labouring men. 

 The nature of their dwellings, for the most 

 part, further degraded them, demoralized 

 them — they were not "homes." We have 

 now to look the present state of things in 

 the face. The coming winter will demand 

 the utmost exercise of prudence on the 

 part of employers. Kindness, justice, 

 and much forbearance must prevail, or I 

 feel matters will be far worse. The whole 

 system of estate management must be 

 adapted to the new state of things. It is in 

 the interest of all parties that it should be 

 so. If owners and tenants will alike feel 

 the effect of this sad breaking up of the old 

 terms on which they lived with the labourers, 

 these latter will, alas ! I am satisfied, have 

 to endure more than they now contemplate 

 from it. The migration to the great seats 

 of manufacturing industry will, I concede, 

 benefit many of the labourers; I do not, 

 hov.'ever, anticipate that the present demand 

 for tiiem will long continue as it now is, and 

 I have yet to learn that in the case of very 

 many of them the addition to earnings will 

 at all compensate for the loss of many of the 

 social advantages they must leave behind 

 them. I have not to learn that when the 

 new market for their toil becomes glutted, 

 they will have to endure many a privation 

 they never would have known at home. 



The wise course for estate owners is to 

 look how they can best offer inducements to 

 rear a more contented race ; this can only be 

 done by giving ample good cottage accom- 

 modation, thus encouraging marriage and the 

 formation of settled habits of life. It is in 

 the nature of the existing state of things that 

 the labourer must, for the future, be con- 

 sidered in the new phase of existence, his 

 education, his increased knowledge of the 

 world about him, which modern life has be- 

 gotten. He has not the dread he once had 

 of travel. Cheap postage and railway fare 

 have gone far to extend the horizon of his 



