n6 A NEW AGRICULTURAL POLICY 



and outlook of the farm worker. Twenty years 

 ago the idea that farm workers might become 

 bailiffs on estates, or become partners in a guild 

 of agriculture, would have been scouted, not 

 without reason, as visionary. I am not one of 

 those who considers that all the virtues of man- 

 kind are contained in corduroys, nor all its weak- 

 nesses in broadcloth. The average farm 

 worker, intellectually, labours under the same 

 difficulties as the small farmer. He is in- 

 dividualistic. Like the small farmer, he is a 

 dealer by instinct, which militates against his 

 working for the common good. His geography 

 is bounded by the environs of the nearest 

 market town. He is intolerant of innovation. 

 He is suspicious of any one devoting himself 

 to social service, outside the narrow circle of 

 charitable works. His education is deficient, 

 and he is just as conservative as the small 

 farmer in experimenting with artificial manures 

 unless the fertiliser has an offensive smell. 



But the cataclysm of war has effected great 

 changes in the mentality of the younger farm 

 labourers. The bicycle did something to widen 

 their horizon, but, unfortunately, the bicycle 

 tended to take the young men away from the 

 country. War brought the young farm worker 

 into touch with the mentally alert workers of 

 the towns ; and taught him to see the effective- 

 ness of scientific organisation of machinery and 

 labour. It brought the tractor on to the 



