72 AN AGRICULTURAL FAGGOT. 



with the view of checking the exodus of agricultural 

 labourers from the land. 



First on the list of what we may call " remedies," is 

 the provision of facilities for obtaining allotments. The 

 Allotments Acts of 1887 and 1890 were intended to 

 remove the difficulty, which was said to exist in some 

 districts, of obtaining land for allotments. The labourers 

 have now the power of obtaining land, by compulsion if 

 necessary, for the purpose ; though only in two cases, I 

 believe, has it been found necessary to put the compulsory 

 powers in force, the demand having in most cases been 

 supplied without difficulty. 



There is nothing particularly novel in the idea of allot- 

 ments. Many a farm labourer had an allotment for long 

 years before he had the franchise. Whether it — the 

 allotment, not the franchise — was, or is, invariably an 

 unmitigated boon is a point on which some difference of 

 opinion exists, even among the labourers themselves. 

 There is, I think, a prevalent opinion among the labourers 

 themselves that good gardens attached to their cottages 

 are more desirable than allotments. 



An authority from whom I have already quoted — the 

 Daily News commissioner — gives some interesting but 

 rather conflicting testimony on this point. He commenced 

 one of his letters with the round assertion that the 

 Allotments Act has proved " a wretched failure," although 

 a few lines lower down he declared that in moving about 

 the country he was struck " by the extent to which allot- 

 ments are being provided." Then he referred to the case 

 of a man in Oxfordshire, who was just getting up his 

 potatoes on his allotment " between the showers," when 

 his master sent for him ; "his crop was spoiling, and he 

 thought he would finish the job. For that very excusable 

 act of insubordination, he found himself discharged." 

 Surely it might have occurred to the commissioner that 

 probably the farmef's crop was spoiling too, and that it 

 was precisely " between the showers " that the man was 



