82 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



were working very long hours, even the ordinary labourers ; 

 and in the case of horsemen, cowmen, and shepherds, there is 

 little time or energy left for cultivating an allotment, which 

 unfortunately in the days of no compulsory powers were 

 often on poor land and at some distance from the village 

 street. A very tired man who has had lumps of earth 

 sticking to his boots all day is not likely to show much enthu- 

 siasm at turning out after his tea or supper to toil on the 

 land again. 



On the other hand the cultivation of an allotment was a 

 pleasurable recreation to the man immured in a factory 

 all day, and it was round the outskirts of towns that the 

 growth of allotments was and still is more in evidence. 



The most useful allotment a man could have, as Arch with 

 his practical mind pointed out, was behind the back door of 

 the cottage, that is, a garden of half an acre or so, and a the 

 larger allotment he had in view was not so much the self- 

 contained small holding, but one which was useful to the 

 odd-jobber, the piece worker, the man who kept a pony, a 

 donkey, or a cow, and was able to choose his master when he 

 had to earn cash wages. 



Nothing is more discreditable, politically, to the landed 

 aristocracy of this country in both Houses of Parliament 

 than their opposition to any attempt made by land reformers 

 to give the labourer easy access to an allotment. Though 

 Allotment Acts were passed in 1882 and 1887, and a Small 

 Holdings Act in 1892, it was not until the Local Government 

 Act of 1894 was passed which instituted Parish Councils, 

 that the labourer could secure without many obstacles put 

 in his path an acre of land, and even then he had to pay 

 dearly for it as a rule. 



The Allotment Act of 1887, was more satisfactory than the 

 preceding one, in that it gave six parliamentary electors the 

 power to request the sanitary authority to provide allotments 

 for the inhabitants of the district. But whilst this was of 

 some benefit to urban workers who could display more inde- 

 pendence of spirit, it required some courage for agricultural 

 labourers to send in a request to a Board of Guardians com- 

 posed chiefly of farmers hostile to the granting of allotments. 



