72 A FARMER'S YEAR 



upon which some of us grow more radical as we grow older. Also 

 I am sure that they have been better argued by others. Still, 

 they are my own, not got from books, but the honest result of my 

 private observations, and there can therefore be no harm in setting 

 them down here. I believe, moreover, that posterity will ratify 

 them. 



To return to our labourer. Most people unacquainted with 

 the routine of a farm have a notion that his duties are of the 

 simplest description. To these I would say let them try any one 

 of them, even the easiest, such as ' drawing ' a ditch, and I think 

 that they will change their views. In truth, there is no single 

 operation on the land that does not require a very considerable 

 amount of skill to perform it properly, and this skill, acquired 

 by years of practice, the agricultural labourer puts at the ser- 

 vice of anyone who will pay him thirteen shillings a week. More- 

 over, there is no nonsense about eight hours a day with him. 

 With brief intervals for food he labours from six to six, or more, 

 and in winter from daylight to dark. Indeed, horsemen and cattle- 

 men work longer ; moreover, when calves or foals are expected 

 they have often to sit up all night, perhaps for the best part of a 

 week, and this without extra charge. Likewise, holidays are for 

 them practically non-existent, and if the weather should be such 

 that it is impossible for farm-work to continue, the labourer goes 

 home and is docked of his wage. 



The sympathetic, on reading these details, may possibly say 

 to the writer of them, ' We hope that you pay your men a higher 

 wage, and don't send them home when the weather is bad ? ' As 

 regards the last, certainly I do bid my steward to try always to find 

 them a job of some sort or other, however hard it may freeze, or 

 snow, or rain. As regards the first, like Mr. Curzon in the House 

 of Commons, I say that the answer is in the negative. The man 

 who, from philanthropic or other motives, began to pay his 

 labourers more than the local rate of wage would bring down 

 upon himself the concentrated curse of his entire neighbourhood. 

 Moreover, if, like myself, he is a farmer farming as a business, he 

 cannot possibly afford to do so. Nobody runs a large farm and 



