JOY IN HARVEST 257 



level these ears. They became for the time, as Jefferies 

 said, gold-miners, sacrificing everything in 'the fierce race 

 for wealth,' though the wealth was but lesser poverty. It 

 was a cruel race too. If, in a team of mowers, setting out 

 to mow in echelon, one man could not maintain the pace 

 he was derided, and often worked himself almost to death 

 to keep up with the heavier and stronger. There are old 

 villagers still living who remember one or two such days 

 as the very summit of endeavour, glorious but deadly. 



What has succeeded this human process? One August 

 day in the Midlands when the fields were white and golden, 

 and the harvest hour had struck, an old farmer who had learnt 

 new methods called his men out into the yard. ' There are 

 the machines,' he said. ' There are the horses. There are 

 the fields. I will give you i an acre to cut and carry and 

 stack.' With wonderful dash and impetus and a quiet cheeri- 

 ness the men set to work then and there. One man took a 

 scythe, as of old, and cut a space round the gateway of the 

 first field and alongside the rougher hedgerow to give the 

 machines a start. The teams and the binders followed and 

 flicked out the bound sheaves with a slick and busy precision 

 till they lay in ranks like plants ready for bedding out in 

 a formal garden. It was hot and blazing weather. The 

 straw was evenly toasted from root to ear, not as in a wet 

 season, when the drying of the straw extending from top 

 to bottom does not move smoothly, but leaves green patches 

 between the rather dirty yellows. The fields too were clean. 

 There was no mixture of mayweed dirtying the base of the 

 straw. No pretty but interloping bindweed ran round the 

 stems intent to carry its pink flower near the light. When you 

 looked at the standing crop in section, after the machines had 

 cut a swath or two, it reminded you not of a copsewood of 

 undergrowth, but of a clean fir plantation of straight trunks 



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