LABOUR. 285 



it is likely that, under the effect of a lack of male labour, 

 they would have been welcomed. But there are also many 

 things in agricultural occupation proper that, in spite of a 

 deticiency of physical strength, women can under all circum- 

 stances do as well as men. They would have undertaken 

 such at a proportionately lower remuneration — which 

 circumstance to the narrowly calculating among our farmers, 

 who grudge a shilling, would have been an inducement. 

 There are things that women can do even better than men. 

 For one thing, it is less trying to them to stoop. Therefore 

 they are exceedingly useful at planting and gathering up 

 fruit or roots. They are good at singling and hand-hoeing, 

 and first rate at haymaking. They make better milkers 

 than men. They are good about cattle, and in the unsavoury 

 occupation of spreading manure they are more careful in 

 the matter of equal distribution. In the German peasant 

 world I have often heard the cadenced fall of the flail wielded 

 by women. Generally on German peasant farms women 

 take a very active part in the labour done, and their position 

 is by no means a sinecure. And on large farms there are 

 generally about four or five women employed to one man. 

 And labourers who have no wife or daughter to take employ- 

 ment with the farmer habitually hire a maid to do double 

 duty, at home and in employment. In France, where 

 peasant folk know admirably how to accommodate themselves 

 to circumstances, women have in the absence of their men- 

 folk held the stilts of the plough. So they have among 

 ourselves. But this is rather overstepping the proper line 

 of demarcation of their province. It should be rather judged 

 an emergency measure. Among ourselves, more even 

 before the war than now, money was wanted in peasant 

 dwelHngs, and the shillings brought home on pay-days by a 

 stalwart daughter of a rural labourer would have made an 

 acceptable addition to his scanty week's earnings. All 

 the world knows that agricultural occupation is healthy. 

 It fatigues, but it does not wear. People have remarked 

 during the war how, with country work, roses came to the 

 cheeks of our town ladies and women so employed, and 

 how their health and strength improved. There are no 



