328 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



they do, and though antagonism exists, both farmers and 

 men are more educated ; their understanding is greater ; 

 their horizon has widened. The farmers on their side, since 

 they have been organised, have shed certain industrial and 

 political prejudices and acquired more political principles. 

 They are beginning to view affairs from a national, rather 

 than from a class point of view. 



Both classes have come to realise that it is not only 

 a question of wages and hours, but that it is equally as much 

 a question of more and better cottages, of tenure, of trans- 

 port, of markets, of drainage, of equipment, of coal and elec- 

 tric power. The labourers understand quite as well as the 

 farmers that agriculture can never prosper, and be remuner- 

 ative either to employer or employed, where the land is water- 

 logged ; where tenants are subject to quit without proper 

 compensation ; where capital and machinery are lacking. 

 Labourers no longer worry themselves over the disestablish- 

 ment of the Church, as Arch did. Cobbett regarded " a 

 couple of flitches worth 50,000 Methodist sermons," and 

 men to-day are regarding the right distribution of water as 

 of more importance than the re-distribution of tithes ; for 

 this new orientation of knowledge the much maligned agi- 

 tator is responsible. The farm labourer is beginning to read 

 tracts other than those to be found within the pages of the 

 Parish Magazine ; and it is to be hoped that the subjective 

 poverty which he has endured through the dark depressing 

 ages covered by this history, will be lightened by an extension 

 of public libraries in the villages under the operations of the 

 Public Libraries Act, December, 1919. 



It may be, as they watch the successful development of 

 State Co-partnership farms at Patringdon and elsewhere, 

 that they will regard communal ownership and working 

 of land as the only goal in the race of wages and prices. 



And what of their attitude to the squire or landlord ? 

 There is little or none of that class hatred so vividly imagined 

 by nervous persons. 'The attitude of mind towards the 

 squire has been that of tolerant puzzlement ; of disappoint- 

 ment : " If he only knew, if we could only get at him, things 

 would have been different ; but it is that bailiff," 



