BENEFITS FOR URBAN WORKERS 331 



a rule, spoiled for returning to rural pursuits. Where 

 experiments of this kind have been tried by certain 

 sympathetic growers I have met, they have invariably 

 been failures. In one instance a grower paid the fare 

 to Lincolnshire for a ' countryman ' from London, 

 agreed to give him i a week wages, and advanced 

 him money for his first week's keep. But the man 

 from London found that the baskets which the women 

 employed in the same field lifted without difficulty 

 were too heavy for him. He was seen to be a failure, 

 but was given his chance. At the end of a fortnight 

 he announced that he was going back to London. 

 Asked his reason, he replied that ' it was too dull in the 

 country. There wasn't even a place where he could 

 get a shave.' 



But, although the man who has spent his life, or 

 even any number of years, in a large city, might be un- 

 fitted for rural industries (and especially those of a 

 kind requiring skill, knowledge, and capacity of no 

 mean order), it is important to bear in mind that, by 

 keeping the countryman in the country, the urban 

 worker would be relieved of a competition he finds it 

 especially difficult to meet when he is a candidate for 

 work where physical vigour and a sturdy appearance 

 are a recommendation. A substantial development of 

 rural industries, again, would give more work to bottle- 

 makers, box-makers, can-makers, printers, and others, 

 who would follow their ordinary occupation much 

 more readily than they could undertake the growing of 

 agricultural or horticultural commodities. It is in 

 these directions, leading to the improvement of the 

 general trade of the country, that the average urban 

 worker would be benefited, rather than by any scheme 

 which aimed at putting him to occupations he knows 

 nothing about, and of which he would, probably, except 



