246 AWAKENING OF ENGLAND. 



soil, or in the wood characteristic to each 

 neighbourhood. We know how inadequate 

 for the job the machine-made shop tool often 

 is, and how useful an intelligent blacksmith 

 is who knows the exact requirements of the 

 individual worker — how the hoe has to be 

 drawn out, how the scythe has to be set, how 

 the bill-hook has to be curved. 



I doubt if the bark-stripper's punyard or 

 the hurdler's hawk's-bill could be bought at the 

 ordinary ironmonger's. It is the village black- 

 smith who usually has to make these to order. 

 But the country blacksmith, destined to spend 

 his life amid many risks in shoeing horses, has 

 become a poorly-paid worker. He, at any 

 rate, should have a better technical education, 

 spend shorter hours in an atmosphere heavily 

 charged with grit and smoke, and be given 

 access to the land on which he can work some 

 hours every day in the pure air. 



Workers in wood might be multiplied were 

 forestry more encouraged by the State. Beech 

 for chair-making, for instance, might be more 

 generally grown, for the woods at High 

 Wycombe have long failed to supply all the raw 

 material, much of which has to be imported. 

 '* Can we not have again," as Mr. Ashbee 



