Airricultural Strikes 



2LI 



life. As I have more than once written, he 

 has been deparochiaUzed ; his patriotism was 

 once simply parochialism, each parish a little 

 state, the magnates of Avhich were the sole 

 authorities whose respect it was his interest 

 to cultivate, whose anger he had alone to 

 fear. 



To me it has always been a hard problem 

 to solve — how educated men would be con- 

 tent with the monotonous, all-weather work 

 of a farm. No amount of wages can make 

 such work really grateful to those who have 

 become readers and thinkers. To such, also, 

 village society fails to supply what they crave 

 for in intercourse with their class. Village 

 libraries, the penny readings, lectures, &c., 

 have whetted the appetite for intellectual food 

 they fail to afford. 



Machinery will, I have no doubt, rapidly 

 further be developed in aid of farm-work ; 

 and this requiring in its use more intelligence, 

 those possessed of it will obtain higher 

 wages, and their work will be of a higher 

 order of interest. I have no fear but these 

 men may be obtained and retained ; I, how- 

 ever, cannot be blind to the difficulty which 

 v/ill now meet owners and tenants in obtain- 

 •ing a contented, industrious staff for the 

 lower class of farm-work. Of this I am as- 

 sured that " homes " will now be more im- 

 portant than mere pay, however forced up 

 by combination. 



The farmer must look to a mere " scratch" 

 staff, hired anywhere, to be watched over, 

 trusted seldom, for confidence is a plant of 

 slow growth ; men to work as by ring of bell, 

 in whom he has no interest beyond the exac- 

 tion to the letter of his bargain with them, 

 knowing he has no real hold over them ; or 

 means must be taken to make farm work that 

 of men who go to it from homes which give 

 them a comfort, a domestic independence 

 town-rented homes cannot give ; with this a 

 drawing from the sympathy of their " betters" 

 about them a personal kindly intercourse 



which shall in its friendliness and care for 

 their well-doing bind them to the spot by 

 higher and nobler ties than those of mere 

 bread-earning. 



To disarm the agitator, the abuses which 

 give him his chief weapons must be removed. 

 To calm down the restless spirit which now 

 prevails, there must be practical work done to 

 convince the labourer that there is that to be 

 found in a decent, well-adapted home, amid 

 kind and sympathizing friends, in a country 

 village, which is not to be obtained in the 

 crowded streets of the towns to which he is 

 now for ever invited. Treat him fairly in 

 respect to the value of his labour, give him 

 opportunity to have his children fairly edu- 

 cated, be patient of his feelings, prompt to 

 show him all sympathy in his trials. " Give 

 and take," taking the sweat of his brow as a 

 matter of business. Bear in mind, you who 

 own the land and you who rent it, like your- 

 selves he has in him all the elements which 

 go to make up love for domestic enjoyment ; 

 regard him in his home, off duty, as a fellow 

 Christian, to whom peace and decency and 

 undisturbed alndi/i;^ there are as precious as 

 to yourself. 



Thus, and thus only, in my judgment can 

 you hope to build up again the nov/ shattered 

 social state of so large a proportion of our 

 villages ; it must be a work of time, it is a 

 work of necessity. ]\Iy own belief is that in 

 the end this strife v.'ili have worked out much 

 real good. On the one side, the lesson will 

 have been taught that much which was but 

 just to the labourer has been utterly neglected; 

 on the other, the lesson will have been reatl 

 that to the labourer life is not a mere matter 

 of wages and hours ; the latter may be 

 shortened, the former raised, and yet the lot, 

 in his own and in tlie case of all his family, 

 be much worse than that from which he 

 either fled altogether, or so changed its con- 

 ditions as to rob it of much, the loss of 

 whicli he must acutely feel in days of trial. 



