230 AGRICULTUEAL LABOUEEES 



lish farming are rightly interpreted, the change will supply- 

 to the first two classes that social ladder, those means of 

 making independent provision for old age, and that stimulus 

 to energy, which their condition has hitherto lacked. The 

 marked deterioration in the quality of English labour is 

 partly due to hopelessness, partly to the educational needs 

 of the day, partly to want of varied experience. The first 

 cause may be removed by the stimulus afforded by small 

 farms or allotments, by new sources of livelihood or new 

 adjuncts to wages; the second may be mitigated by tech- 

 nical teaching in village schools ; for the third it is perhaps 

 hopeless to look for the extended revival of the bothy system 

 of the north, which under a slightly different form prevailed 

 at no distant period throughout the country. Farmers and 

 their men once lived together and ate together; but the 

 relations of the agricultural classes are altered. The re- 

 ports of the Agricultural Commissions at the beginning of 

 the century show that the practice of lodging and feeding 

 farm servants died out because farmers' wives were 'too 

 fine to keep house.' But such a practice benefits farmers, 

 because, when prices are low, they need not sell large 

 quantities of produce to realise money wages ; and, in times 

 of scarcity, labourers obtain a larger money value in the 

 shape of food than they could buy for themselves. The 

 farmer had constantly on the premises a large staff" of 

 labour : labour was more efficient ; boys, boarded and 

 lodged in farmhouses, learned all kinds of work, turned 

 their hands, like Mr. Arch, to everything, and, like him,' 

 were perhaps worth 24.9. a week to their employer. Above 

 all, the system checked early and improvident marriages. 

 The discomforts of a lodger in an overcrowded cottage 

 blind the agricultural labourer to all prudential considera- 

 tions ; he marries before he has time to save ; for the next 



