THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



us "the service of his body" but to relinquish for our 

 benefit the right and opportunity of exorcising his 

 mind. We are using his body and soul in lieu of ma- 

 chinery of brass and iron. Not that we blame capitalists, 

 Ijowevcr, for manufacturing and consumiusf, or accuse 

 the upper classes of living by such repression and de- 

 gradation of the lower. By no means ; for we are all 

 in fault. And the factory-girls spend years in tying 

 threads, in oi'der that the poor housewife elsewhere 

 may procure cheap calico ; and the lad grows up to 

 manhood in the din of the railworks, feeding sti'ips of 

 metal into the cutting engine, in order that we may 

 save in building and constructing. Machinery has 

 wonderfully extended knowledge and a high order of 

 skill among workmen. Still at the same time it has 

 made immense numbers of human beings into mere 

 machines ; and we believe that one of the best 

 means of inaugurating a happier condition of the 

 labouring-classes, is to introduce wood and metal 

 wherever it can be economically made to take the place 

 of human nerves and muscles and a low order of mental 

 attention, contining manual labour to operations re- 

 quiring thought, and exercising beneficial effects on 

 the character of the workman. One of the finest 

 pieces of education is to instruct a youth in the use, 

 and entrust him with the care, of a machine or process 

 needing the energy of bis mind ; and one of the worst 

 kinds of intellectual degradation is to bind him ten or 

 twelve hours a day to labour,for which the " unthinking 

 horse" or other dumb beast might be equally fitted, 

 had it hands instead of hoofs. What a difference in 

 ability and independence of thought between the turner 

 who holds the tool to the lathe, or the potter who 

 shapes the vase upon the wheel, and their men who 

 merely actuate the crank ! What a distance of inferiority 

 between the labourer that carries bricks to the scaffold- 

 ing, and him that lays them in lintels or " string- 

 courses" of his own designing ! 



While many have pitied poor Hodge, or rather the 

 smart intelligent ploughman and carter that he is ra- 

 pidly becoming, we do not know that anyone ever dis- 

 covered the superiority of Hodge's kind" of work over 

 many tasks performed by the quick-fingered "division- 

 of-labour" factory-folk. But think of the variety of his 

 toils— of his judgment in guiding a team, or feeding a 

 bullock — in straightening a furrow or paring a sheep's 

 foot— in managing a drill, or sloping the banks and 

 lerelling the bottom of a ditch ! Is there not selection 

 and calculation in the plashing of a hedge; and taste, 

 as well as tact and skill, in the building of an elegant 

 and noble rick ? True, there is still the old toil of 

 filling dung-cart, for which strong-armed and weak- 

 headed men are proverbially said to be fitted. But tile 

 progress of agricultural mechanics is gradually re- 

 lieving the labourer of his more excessively mechanical 

 toils. He is delivered from the long winter discipline of 

 the flail ; relieved of shaking-out grass and raking it 

 up again as hay. He has been partially freed from the 

 hoe; the steam engine, in large farmsteads, cuts, grinds, 

 and crushes for him, leaving him to study the wants 

 and comforts of the animals under his charge. The 

 reaping machine has well-nigh saved him from the 

 racking scythe and arduous sickle; the steam plough 

 will soon make tillage-labour his pleasing occupation 

 instead of his burden. There might also be a satisfac- 

 tory comparison between t'he amount of happiness and 

 mental satisfaction which Hodge finds in the nature 

 and objects, and in watching the successful issue of his 

 toil— the beasts turned-out fat for market, the crop 

 prospering under his toil and attention, and so on, 

 against the mere knowledge of having knocked-ofi" so 

 many pens or buttons per day, and seen them packed 

 in boxes, never more to be heard of. 



Some readers may fail to see at once how the eleva- 

 tion of the nature of his employment is to accomplish 

 much in benefiting the labourer's condition. But just 

 consider that some masters, as well as men, hold senti- 

 ments on this matter, and act in a way which may be 

 stigmatised, without harshness or extravagance, as a 

 species of brutality. They care only to keep their men 

 at hard work, no matter at all what the nature of the 

 work may be, provided it answers their purpose of 

 profit — carele-is tliat human minds should be smothered 

 in mere bestial occupations, with the natural result of 

 debasing both the slaves and their task-masters. Such 

 employers never consider ^ohat sorts of labour are good 

 for men, and would have men and women dragging 

 ploughs and hari'ows, if it were only legal, customary, 

 and would pay. 



But we ought not to reckon our labourers as so many 

 " hands" merely, as the statisticians do. We are not to 

 calculate the water-power, wind-pov.'er, steam-power, 

 horse-power, and manual-power on an estate, as all 

 alike in value, according to the number of pounds 

 avoirdupois it can raise one foot per minute. We are 

 blaspheming the work of God to do so — who " made 

 man in His own image." Rather let us say. We have 

 so many minds on our estate, each capable of more or 

 less exercise in invention and study; and the aim 

 should be to produce the highest result of yield and 

 profit from the land, with the least harm and greatest 

 improvement to the mental and moral powers of the 

 workmen. 



Again, reflect that if the masses of oin* population 

 (who have the heaviest of the national work to do) are 

 ever to be thinking, well-cultured men, and everybody 

 must wish they were so, for the sake of humanity, 

 morality, and religion, they must have icork that they 

 can take pleasure in. If labour is to continue to be 

 so extensively only a mechanical slavery, the further 

 you extend education and power for thought, the more 

 dissatisfied will labourers be with that drudgery ; and 

 all the wisdom and power of the rich and titled will 

 not hinder them from rebelling against it. Men have 

 no right to be made to toil in that which they abhor, 

 and which holds down their mental energies, if there be 

 any means for making machinery perform it instead. 

 And there are many cases in which, if mechanism can- 

 not be economically applied in such work, the product 

 can be dispensed with. We honour those who preach 

 the dignity of labour, and strive to introduce whatever 

 means may avail to make the workman's toil more 

 pleasant to him. 



Let our readers meditate on this subject. Let them 

 consider that if " education," when left only to earliest 

 youth, to evenings and spare hours, yet brings happy 

 results, how much more may be done by altering and 

 exalting the character of such occupations as absorb all 

 a man's day in what is strictly and rigidly machine- 

 like and material ! We have alluded to the introduction 

 of improved farm-implements as having in many ways 

 lightened the pressure of the labourer's work ; but 

 there are other measures required— such as the relieving 

 of boys and girls, and also women, from the painfully 

 demoralizing system of field gang-work ; the substitu- 

 tion of contract-work for much that is now unnecessarily 

 done by the day, and other methods of giving the 

 labourer a direct personal interest, and therefore of 

 pleasure, in the task he is perlorming. We only urge 

 a greater attention to the principle of employing men 

 as much as possible in suitable operations, aflbrding 

 scape for the greatest exercise of what thinking faculty 

 they may possess— leaving practical suggestions and 

 applications for business -people to discover in the 

 course of their daily arrangements and pursuits. 



