APPENDIX 463 



truth in the remark a farmer made to me yesterday, " Education has 

 done it all, sir." ' 



Here, too, are some extracts from a letter written to me by a large 

 landowner in this county, Lord Walsingham, fror- which he has given 

 me leave to quote : 



'April 13, 1899. 



. . . ' I observe that you are about to introduce a discussion in the 

 Norfolk Chamber of Agriculture on the dearth of agricultural labourers, 

 and to suggest a Government inquiry into its causes. This dearth is 

 much felt here, and although for many years I have been cultivating 

 land at a loss under the impression that it was at least a charity to 

 find employment for the agricultural population, I have now seriously 

 to contemplate the prospect of allowing farms which do pay to go out 

 of cultivation for want of hands to carry on the work. Better education 

 makes every young man desire to wear a black coat, and the drift is 

 towards the towns, where clerks are superabundant already, and the 

 brain market is overstocked. Mechanical contrivances may come to 

 the rescue to some extent. I send a lot of milk to London, and shall 

 probably be obliged to milk the cows by machinery, for the men here 

 dislike the job, and the women won't do it. Yet are they likely to be 

 so much better off that they can afford to decline a healthy country 

 life and rural labour ? High wages will not mend matters, for farming 

 is very uphill work at present prices, and if the labour bill runs high 

 no profit can be made, and the light lands must go back to rabbits. 

 Already many farmers prefer to pay their rent out of these rather than 

 to run the risks of higher cultivation. . . .' 



Lord Walsingham informs me also that the population in the 

 villages on the Merton estate showed a marked diminution at the last 

 census and that allotments there are found to have no attraction, as 

 they have been tried and failed. I add another instance that suggests 

 a rapidly decreasing population. From the report made by the 

 Officer of Health to the Bosmere District Council in Suffolk, it would 

 appear that in 1898 the marriages of the district were about 33 per 

 cent, less than those of 1897, and 14 per cent, less than the average of 

 those in the previous decade. Out of a total of 205 deaths in the same 

 district it would appear also that no less than ninety-eight were those 

 of persons of over sixty years of age, the great disproportion of the 

 figures being explained by the absence of that section of the population 

 whose ages vary from twenty to sixty. 



Commenting on these facts in an article 'he East Anglian Daily 



