FAILURE OF PRIVATE ENTERPRISE 13 



have ever since been worked as a vast sheep 

 farm. On the portion owned the whole of the 

 land has been laid down to grass ; the cottages, 

 and in many cases the farmhouses and build- 

 ings, have been allowed to fall into ruin, and 

 two hamlets have been completely depopulated. 

 Just prior to the War, on one property consist- 

 ing formerly of five farms and totalling 1360 

 acres, two men only were regularly employed. 

 On another group of 1500 acres four men 

 were regularly employed where about seventy 

 once found work. 



The labourer's average wage, including all 

 extras, was then about 17s. od. a week, and 

 one out of every two or three labourers lived 

 in a farm-tied cottage, where, if he possessed a 

 family, he remained manacled like a serf. 

 There was the open road, it was true, which 

 many young men speedily took, but that road 

 led to no security of employment, and debt held 

 the father of a family like a bondman until 

 harvest came round ; and after harvest the 

 lean days of winter stared him in the face. 



The landowner and the farmer passed their 

 lives untroubled, for the most part, by Acts of 

 Parliament. Each in his own way lived the 

 life of a feudal chief. Here it might be an 

 owner, there a large tenant-farmer, who had 

 become the lord of the soil, and whose word 

 was law in the employment of labour, stereo- 

 typing a low standard for wages in the letting 



