RURAI, EXODUS 97 



properly so called. Certainly, that might lead to a temporary progress of 

 industry and trade, but the futvire of the race would be seriously compro- 

 mised (i). 



Seasonal emigration is especially common among agricultural labour- 

 ers and small farmers in districts where the land is largely subdivided, 

 the population dense and there is less need of labourers; they emigrate 

 to districts of extensive cultivation where labourers are few. Thus, many 

 labourers and small farmers of our Flanders go to 27 of the French de- 

 partments for the reaping or the sugar beet harvest. Thus also the 

 labourers of Hageland and Campine do season work in the districts of ex- 

 tensive cvdtivation in Hesbaye and Condroz and we should not be at all 

 surprised if the result of the employment of these migratory labourers 

 were again to induce the last agricultural labourers remaining in these 

 regions to emigrate to the industrial centres (2). 



Considered only on its material side, doubtless seasonal emigration is 

 an advantage for the labourer. The farmers told ]\I. Ronse several times in 

 the course of his enquiry that many labourers would not have enough to live 

 on in the dull season unless they emigrated. The other agricultural labour- 

 ers benefit by the situation : the number of labourers being reduced, by 

 the action of the law of supply and demand, the wages rise (3) . Needless to 

 say, seasonal emigration renders the position of the farmers more difficult ; 

 at certain periods it draws away somewhat more than a fifth of the agri- 

 cultural labourers, the result of which is a scarcity of manual labour and 

 the necessity of substituting machine work for it. With regard to the 

 physical and moral results, we shall say with M. Ronse, " that this excessive 

 hard work, together with the unsatisfactory conditions of their life — 

 without sufficient wholesome food or health^^ lodgings — necessarily exhausts 

 the labourers. Fortunately, their work is in the open air and, on returning 

 to their country, the hardy Flemings soon recover from their fatigue and 

 recommence their hard work. Nevertheless, some enfeeblement of their 

 constitutions is to be feared, it may be a certain degeneration of the race. 

 . . . It is true that the morality of our emigrants has a safeguard in the 

 isolation in which they live. However, the view of French life, too careless 



(i) Aqriculture. Questions du jour, Compte rendu du X^ Con ires international tsnu a Gand 

 1913, Pg- 320. 



(2) Many farmers, says M. I^aur, without reference to any special district, finding labour- 

 ers becoming scarcer and scarcer and wages rapidly rising, have had recourse to the engage- 

 ment of migratory labourers. They have for a while supplied the want, but the result has 

 been to induce the remaining local labourers to leave the country for the towns. 

 Not only were the labourers of the locality affected by the fall in wages, the unfailing result 

 of the first employment of migratory labour, but their social position seemed to suffer when 

 they were obliged to work with foreigners, far inferior to them in education. The influence 

 of the migratory labourers has, in many cases, determined more than one, who still hesit- 

 ated, to change his occupation. (Reports of the rst. Section of the loth. International 

 Congress of Agriculture, Ghent, 1913, p. 55). Amongst the season labourers must be ranged 

 the Belgian wood-cutters who work in winter in the forests of French Anlenne. 



(3) Ronse, op. cit., p. 203. 



