LABOUR 259 



to the labourers employed, who under such conditions became 

 cultivators fixed on the soil and raising produce, while still remaining 

 wage-earners, or rather collectively independent contractors for 

 work. The Prussian Government, in the course of its land settle- 

 ment, already referred to, soon found itself led to descend even lower 

 in the scale of area. In the vicinity of Bromberg — then still a 

 Prussian city — in 1893 I found groups of settlements going down to 

 five morgens (three and a half acres) apiece, granted (for gradual 

 acquisition by instalment-purchase) to labourers, who were glad 

 enough to acquire such little plots. In France similar lopins de 

 terre are valued possessions for labouring folk. Lord Ernie's small- 

 holdings at Maulden are not of the favoured fifty acres size, but 

 smaller. In this matter we want gradation. In Germany it is a 

 common thing for the agricultural labourer to have his own little 

 anwesen, which yields him welcome produce, gives him occupation 

 such as keeps him out of the public-house, and endows him with a 

 sense, and a certain reality, of independence. 



We shall therefore have the other side of the labour question to 

 keep in view as well as the more familiar one which, from the 

 employer's side, now causes so much anxiety and heartburning. 



The question of labour, indeed, bids fair to dominate to a con- 

 siderable extent the development of our new rural policy. 



The present time finds the labour world in a peculiarly agitated 

 mood, like a boiling cauldron. There is fermentation and commo- 

 tion in all its parts, breaking out again and again in boisterous 

 ebullitions. New pretensions are put forward, new claims are 

 advanced, discipline is disregarded, even within trade union ranks 

 — since there is always a " black pudding seller " to outbid modern 

 " Cleons," there are strikes dropping from the sky like bolts from the 

 blue, but of previously unheard-of magnitude ; there is ' ' direct 

 action " threatened, and as a necessary consequence there is stag- 

 nation, often entire stoppage, of productive work, dearth of the 

 necessaries of life, unemployment, trouble, widespread suffering 

 and loss to the country. 



Some of the reasons for this unhealthy state of things are not far 



to seek. They are like the annual disturbances of human health 



heralding spring. War excites passions and restlessness worse than 



alcohol, but the excitement caused by it is bound in the course of 



time to exhaust itself by its own violence and turbulence. The 



spirit of " fighting " which has entered into the blood has, for the 



time, obliterated constitutional disposition to compromise prompted 



by reason. Whoever has fought the Germans is in a temper to 



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