THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



27 



all praise. It must be a work of time ; for it is a moat ex- 

 pensive work on some estates ; but the " cause" has its im- 

 pulse, and I have little fear but the next generation will see 

 the poor man as a rule treated in the matter of his dwelling as 

 we would desire. For ray present purpose it is sufficient for 

 jne to claim the conclusion that thousands of labourers are 

 better lodged than they were a few years since ; that there is 

 a growing disposition among landowners to regard proper 

 dwellings for the poor in the same important light as proper 

 homesteads for their tenants. 



Assuming, then, the house to be better, how is the cupboard 

 furnished ? what about the wages? Within the sphere of my 

 own observation I see here, too, a great improvement : although 

 wages may not have increased numerically as to the shillings 

 due on Saturday, the shillings received go far further to fur- 

 nish the week's necessaries, the Sunday's extra diet ; clothing 

 as well as bread is much reduced in price ; shoes keep up, but 

 modern farm work reduces the average expenditure of a 

 family's shoe leather, so much labour being now done with 

 little comparative travel. Again, the large and increasing 

 amount of land under cultivation, and the never-ceasing cul- 

 tivation of every inch of it, has created a demand for more 

 hands, at the very time extensive emigration is reducing their 

 numbers. This, if it gives the men — the single men — a spirit 

 of independence, at times locally inconvenient, acts as a whole- 

 some drag on any downhill course of wages oa the ground of 

 " low prices." 



So far from machinery, in its present extensive application 

 to farm work, having decreased the demand for manual labour, 

 it has called for more haads ; more stock arc kept, and all 

 sorts of stock are tended with more care ; the variety of ihe 

 food give", and its different forms of preparation, have made 

 a great call for " hands." The steam engine may do a good 

 deal of cooking and carving for the flock, the shcda and styes, 

 but there are many mnde dishes which require hand labour to 

 work the instruments by which they are prepared. The wait- 

 ing on the animals is also hand labour. Let me adJ, in passing, 

 that the order and method of good farming, the close 

 acquaintance with complicated machinery, the necessarily ac- 

 quired knowledge of the details of a farm, worked with the 

 skill and capital of a factory, has an inevitable good moral effect 

 upon its " hands." It is said footmen become butlers, butlers 

 gentlemen, by diligent observation of the machinery of refined 

 life ; so the most raw and stolid of farm youths by degrees 

 has his eyes opened to see, and his intellect excited to under- 

 stand the value of these processes, and the nature of the ma- 

 chinery by which they are accomplished. There is always a 

 premium before liis eyes in the value he beholds given to those 

 of his class who, by their steadiness and docility, learn enough 

 and become trusted enough to take charge of particular de- 

 partments requiring those qualifications. After all that ma- 

 chinery can do on the surface of the soil, there remains yet in 

 the field and at the barn a great deal for men, women, and 

 almost children to do. The large family is not the curse it 

 used to be thought. True, the shoe bill is heavy, the assaults 

 on the cupboard many and difficult to meet ; but, with an 

 ordinary share of health, if drinking and waste are excluded 

 from the household, the earnings of a family not only meet its 

 wants better than I ever knew them, but leave the margin I 

 love to see for a certain amount of occasional indulgence in 

 pleasures and tastes not only wholesome, but leading to 

 positive good. 



The truck system is, I hope, fast passing away; the men 

 are now, with little exception, paid their earnings in money; 

 if they take any part in corn, it is at their own option that 

 they do so. Here and there a few employers may be found 



who expect their labourers to take " tailing" wheat of them at 

 more than it would fetch in the market ; they are generally of 

 a class whose days as tenant-farmers are numbered, for they 

 are far in the rear of that intelligence by the exercise of which 

 a renting occupier of land can live. 



I must yet say a word or two on the all-important question 

 of the labourer's education. From the very nature of things, 

 the time in which the children of this class can be " schooled" 

 is very limited. They are born to an inherited avocation ; 

 where the nailed shoe of the father has trodden the little 

 leathers of his boys must early learn to tread. Out-door em- 

 ployment demands very early acquaintance with exposure to 

 weather; the feet and hands must be hardened; the constitution 

 given a power to endure the extremes of heat and cold — the li- 

 ability to that but little intermitting damping which our climate 

 inflicts. To read with ease, to be master of simple rules of 

 arithmetic, to write a plain hand, to be grounded in religious 

 truth and in a good general knowledge of Scripture, to have a 

 boy's idea of the earth in outline, as maps may give it — this is 

 nearly all that can be hoped from any system of schooling in 

 a purely rural district ; add to this, habits of obedience and 

 decency, control over the tongue, and an aim at strict honesty, 

 and you have obtained all you could with reason expect. The 

 Infant-school must form the base of the work, which the more 

 advanced school and Sunday-school must complete. The farm 

 lad u now, so far as he can be, intellectually " finished," and 

 he gees at once to " bird-keeping," or other work of his 

 api'renticeship. In the winter season night schools, if well 

 managed, will, at all events, do much to prevent the loss of 

 the learning gained as above; with boys of superior intelli- 

 gence it will do more. 



Managers of these schools must remember that these lads 

 must be led to work ; as children they were made to do so. 

 Cheerful, pleasant teaching, ready tact in offering that which 

 will pmuse while it instructs, is the great secret. The pupils 

 arc ofteu very tired, very sleepy, and yet I have seen them in- 

 duced to work with a zeal and a result that have astonished me. 

 Those who taught them made it a labour of love, they received 

 teaching iu the spirit offered. I have known some through- 

 out a winter walk miles to meet their " young lady" teachers, 

 and by their good conduct amply repay the pains bestowed 

 upon them. Far more can be done, and is dene, in the girls' 

 school ; they can be kept t'aere longer, and much of manual 

 labour, useful, nay, necessary for them in after-life, can be, 

 and is generally taught to them. 



I lately in your columns spoke of the mechanics as a read - 

 lug class. I can say with truth the agricultural labourer now 

 draws much from books ; instead of being deluged with gra- 

 tuitous tracts— many good, very many far beyond his com- 

 prehension— he has now, with a good share of religious litera- 

 ture, a great amount of useful purely secular reading, 

 rendered cheap that he can buy it, plain in construction that 

 he can understand it. Tictorial illustration has great charms 

 iu a cottage ; it helps out the reader, interprets to those who 

 cannot read. Just as in the higher classes we take books of 

 value number by number, so now it is very common for the 

 labourers of the rising generation to subscribe weekly or 

 monthly, as it may be, for some of the many excellent illus- 

 trated serials which the ; hawkers bring to their^'doors. It is 

 no unusual thing to fiad in many villages a great and increas- 

 ing demand in this way for really good books. Trash may 

 be bought at " a fair," but I see little of it now about. There 

 is a great improvement also in the pictures on the wall and 

 teatray ; I only now know of one " Prodigal Son" in topboots 

 and a red coat, and the very " loud" flirtations pictured as be- 

 tween the gentleman iu uniform and the lady in riding-habit 



