One of the New Voters 



the first week or so of haymaking or reaping the men 

 usually get drunk, delighted with the prospect before 

 them, they then settle down fairly well. Towards the 

 end they struggle hard to recover lost time and the 

 money spent in ale. 



As the last week approached, Roger went up into 

 the village and ordered the shoemaker to make him a 

 good pair of boots. He paid partly for them then, 

 and the rest next pay-day. This was a tremendous 

 effort. The labourer usually pays a shilling at a time, 

 but Roger mistrusted himself. Harvest was practi- 

 cally over, and after all the labour and the long hours, 

 the exposure to the sun and the rude lodging, he found 

 he should scarcely have thirty shillings. With the 

 utmost ordinary care he could have saved a good 

 lump of money. He was a single man, and his actual 

 keep cost but little. Many married labourers, who 

 had been forced by hard necessity to economy, con- 

 trived to put by enough to buy clothes for their 

 families. The single man, with every advantage, 

 hardly had thirty shillings, and even then it showed 

 extraordinary prudence on his part to go and purchase 

 a pair of boots for the winter. Very few in his place 

 would have been as thoughtful as that ; they would 

 have got boots somehow in the end, but not before- 

 hand. This life of animal labour does not grow the 

 spirit of economy. Not only in farming, but in navvy 

 work, in the rougher work of factories and mines, the 

 same fact is evident. The man who labours with thew 

 and sinew at horse labour crane labour not for 

 himself, but for others, is not the man who saves. If 

 he worked for his own hand possibly he might, no 

 matter how rough his labour and fare; not while 

 working for another. Roger reached his distant 

 home among the meadows at last, with one golden 

 105 



