STIRRINGS OF NEW LIFE. 157 



purely agricultural districts to increase the chances of success 

 in life, to make life more interesting, and to bring about a more 

 attractive old age than at present, when under existing condi- 

 tions the workhouse is apt to loom too large on the horizon of the 

 agricultural labourer." 



Miss Maude Davies, following in Dr. Mann's footsteps, 

 investigated a Wiltshire village in 1905. l Corsley was 

 different to Ridgmount in that it had no ducal park at its 

 gates. It breathed a freer atmosphere as it had a class of 

 small holders and a sprinkling of artisans such as wagon- 

 makers, masons, etc., within its parish. Like Ridgmount 

 it once had its home-industries of lace-making and 

 strawplaiting, and Corsley also once had its handlooms and 

 spinning wheels. 



There were 220 households in Corsley and Miss Davies 

 seemed to have managed to enter into all of them and find out, 

 not from the employing class only, as the Board of Trade's 

 investigators did, but from the wives and from the men 

 themselves, what wages were earned and how they were 

 spent. 



She even gives a detailed account of the topics of conversa- 

 tion and the games played at the various public houses on 

 one December night ! 



In 1841 the population of Corsley was 1621. In 1901 it 

 was 824. During the depression farms, instead of being en- 

 grossed, were broken up and leased as small holdings, which 

 became dairy farms or market gardens, and thirty families 

 were living on their holdings of less than 20 acres each in 

 1905. As land reverted to grass, women ceased to be 

 employed in agriculture. No longer did women gather 

 stones off the plough land, plant beans, tie corn, and hoe 

 roots (for a wage of lod. a day), since the machine and the 

 invading sea of grass drove them from the fields as effectually 

 as the steam power of the town factory drove them from the 

 land-loom and the spinning-wheel. Thus the girls left to 

 don the cap and apron of domestic service, whilst the lads 

 sighed and struck out townwards under the magnetic spell 

 of the eternal feminine. 



1 Life in an English Village. 



