1903] on Bural England. 329 



Taking these figures as approximately correct, I ask whether 

 such a result is beyond the bounds of possibility ? In my opinion the 

 answer is, No. 



We are confronted, then, as I hope I have sliown to your content, 

 by two great national needs. The need of increasing the numbers 

 of our rural population, and the need of increasing the productive 

 powers of our land — which needs, in my opinion, are more or less 

 dependent for their satisfaction upon each other. 



How can the rural population be increased ? How even can the 

 exodus from the countryside be stayed ? 



To deal with this question, we must begin by considering the 

 conditions — vastly improved of late years, it is true — under which 

 the great majority of actual earth-tillers still exist in England. I 

 will state them as briefly as I can. 



Firstly, they live upon a weekly wage which must be earned by 

 very hard and continuous manual labour, involving a great deal of 

 skill which can only be acquired by years of experience. Nothing 

 is more common than the idea that the agricultural labourer is a 

 foolish, thick-headed person (generically known as " Hodge ") whose 

 work could be done by anybody. Let anybody try it. I have used 

 my hands in my time, and know what it is to toil at some heavy 

 monotonous labour for eight or ten hours at a stretch, but I should be 

 sorry to attempt the daily tasks that the farm-hand carries out with so 

 much skill, such as ploughing, hedge-laying, draining, stacking, or 

 even manure-turning — I mention but a few of them. 



In reward for these, our labourer, when he is not out of place, or 

 sick which fortunately for him is seldom, receives a wage that, in- 

 cluding his harvest and haysel, varies from about 16s. a week in the 

 eastern counties, to 11. or a little more in Yorkshire, the south of 

 England and the districts near London. Out of this, unless he is 

 a stock or horseman, who have their houses free, he must pay Is. 6d, 

 or 28. a week for a cottage, the contribution to his sick-club, and 

 support and clothe a family, often large and thriving. Obviously, 

 therefore, iie has few holidays, since holidays mean the loss of the 

 daily half- crown, without which his accounts will not balance. In 

 short, his life from childhood to the grave, is one of incessant, un- 

 varying exertion, carried out in every sort of weather, with little 

 change or recreation, and involving rising soon after the light in 

 summer, and long before it in winter ; coarsely prepared food, clothing 

 that is not too ample ; and perhaps an old age spent in the poor-house ; 

 to which must be added all the other anxieties and cares that are the 

 common lot of humanity. Unless he is a very exceptional man, he has 

 in most districts small prospect of rising in the world. Where he 

 began, there he must end, after a lapse of half a century or so, only 

 perchance a little lower down. Nobody took any interest in his 

 birth, and nobody will take any interest in his funeral, nor outside 

 of the parish register will any record remain of his existence upon 

 this troubled snhere, except of course in the ditches that he has 



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