RURAL EXODUS 99 



§ 2. Causes and effects of the rur.\l exodus. 



The first reason is that the land has no work to offer them. If there 

 are moments in the year when the want of labourers is felt, there are others, 

 especially in winter, when many agricultural labourers are unemployed ; 

 the small industries carried on as auxiliaries to agriculture have almost 

 disappeared ; the agricultural distilleries have been stopped ; the labourers 

 leave the village because the manufacturers give higher wages and also, as 

 we have said, because some of them hope to form by means of their work in 

 the factories the little capital they require in order to establish them- 

 selves one day. 



On the other hand, the sugar refineries, which formerly provided work 

 for unoccupied agricultural labourers during a large part of the winter, 

 now manage, with their improved equipment, to finish their work in eight 

 or nine weeks. L,et us add that cattle grazing sometimes takes the place 

 of agriculture and has need of fewer hands. 



Some also abandon agricultural labour because work in the factories 

 makes them more independent of their relations — they thus escape all super- 

 vision and enjo}^ the whole of their wages (i) — because the factories give 

 some holidays, whilst in the country there is a class, that of servants 

 in the farm houses, whose work does not stop even on Sundays, and 

 then there are the pleasant meetings with companions on the way to the yards 

 or the workshop ; let us add, as we have written above, that at certain 

 moments many rural labourers can find no occupation in the country. They 

 therefore, greedily seize the chance offered them by the labourers' season 

 tickets, to go and earn good wages for some weeks in a factory. How 

 dependent on the season is the nature of this daily emigration is shown 

 by the statistics of season tickets issued in the last three weeks of x'Vpril 

 and the first week of i\Iay, 19 13. April is a period of hard work in the 

 country; that of the planting of potatoes, of the preparation of the soil 

 for beetroot and the sowing of the same ; the first part of May, on the 

 contrary, is a period of repose. The sowing is finished, but the grain has 

 not yet sprung up. From 107,56] season tickets between April 13th. and 

 19th., the number increased to 115,120 between April 20th. and 26th., 

 to 138, 959 between April 27th. and May 3rd. and to 146,192 between 

 May 4th. and loth. (2). 



As M. iMahaim says (3) there is only a small minority of constant tra- 

 vellers going backwards and forwards daity or weekly and the large majority 

 of labourers holding season tickets is made up of occasional travellers. 

 The same author distinguishes six types among these, namely: ist.,the oc- 



(i) Cf. Reports of the loth. International Congress of Agriculture, Brussels, 1913, p. 128. 



(2) The general strike, which lasted oflacially from April 14th. to 28th., 191 3, had, it 

 seems to us, very little effect on the labourers' season tickets. It took place at a time 

 when manv of the migratory labourers were living at home and it scarcely prevented their 

 resumption of work, when the field work was done. 



{3) Report quoted, p. 6. 



