OUR SENTIMENTAL GARDEN 



grocer's wife should develop consumption before the first 

 stone of any sanatorium is ready ! 



Now, that prosperous, contented class, the labourer on 

 the great estate, a man who lives on his lord's lands, if 

 not rent free, very nearly so, with wood and garden 

 produce, potatoes, milk and what not, and steady employ- 

 ment all the year round, he is to be benefitedsave the 

 mark ! A " minimum wage/' cheap housing, the fixed 

 hours, the sacred half-holiday, it sounds so plausible ! 

 The propagandist is volubly at work. "No wonder/' 

 as the young Squire we have recently visited once rue- 

 fully said to us, "my decent, contented, God-fearing 

 villagers were turned in a couple of hours into shrieking, 

 blaspheming lunatics by such a gospel, preached with 

 forcible arguments in the public-house." 

 Of course they will get their demands. Striking, with 

 " peaceful picketing," generally gets its way, even if not 

 backed up by Government emissaries and the glorious 

 visions flash-lighted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer. 

 But what will be the result? Half the amount of em- 

 ployment on the estates of those who can still afford to 

 keep them, and no all-the-year-round engagements. When 

 the work is slack the over-paid and inimical labourer will 

 naturally be discharged. We say inimical, for how can 

 friendly relations be maintained if the old solidarity is 

 destroyed ? This, of course, is what is aimed at / and 

 the quack remedy, the patent pill alluringly held aloft, is 

 State ownership of land ! The land is to be managed like 

 the Workhouse, the Prison, and the Reformatory, of 

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