408 A FARMER'S YEAR 



labourer, goes very much by favour. Moreover, as a class, they 

 are sensitive, and dislike the idea of failing. ' But how dreadful 

 it would be if I didn't win,' said a certain good lady to me the 

 other day when I urged her to show her butter. Fortunately she 

 did win. 



Before the meeting broke up I ventured to point out that in 

 my view these questions went much deeper than had been 

 suggested, being rooted indeed in the prevailing agricultural 

 depression. Surely the matter of skilled labour is economic, and 

 it is leaving the land, not for lack of technical instruction, benefit 

 societies with money prizes, or flower-shows, but because the 

 land can no longer compete against the towns and pay the able- 

 bodied and active labourer a sufficient wage to tempt him to stay 

 at home. It must never be forgotten that the lot of the agricul- 

 tural labourer is part and parcel of the lot of agriculture. There 

 used to be plenty of labour upon the land when the land was 

 prosperous ; now that its prosperity has departed, there is little, 

 and the inference is plain. The young men are not learning the 

 trade ; they are drifting to the cities or elsewhere, leaving the old 

 or the unfit to do the work, and ultimately to increase the rates. 



That this is no fancy can be proved by any one who takes the 

 trouble to walk over my own or other farms and see how large is 

 the proportion of elderly men employed upon them. The young 

 fellow who can plough, and thatch, and milk, as his father did, is 

 indeed a rara avis to-day. This cry of the want of labour is to be 

 heard in every direction one can hardly open a country news- 

 paper without seeing some allusion to its scarceness. Some try to 

 explain this as consequent on the lack of cottages in certain 

 districts. Cottages do not pay to build, and there may be a basis 

 of fact in this argument ; but it is not the kernel of the question, 

 for even where the dwellings exist the men are wanting, Thus : 

 a cottage of mine with a good garden has been standing vacant 

 for a year because I cannot find a labouring tenant. Indeed, I am 

 told that in one small village a few miles away no less than forty 

 cottages are unoccupied. 



