286 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



women more hard worked, agriculturally speaking, than 

 the Wends (a genuinely Slav race, but for the most part 

 now Germanised) among whom I spent six years, five decades 

 ago. They are hard worked still. But nowhere do you 

 meet with more healthy women. Their young mothers 

 are eagerly sought after as nurses all over Central Germany. 

 And, as for derogatoriness of farm labour, the notion is 

 absurd. We are every one of us called to the work peculiar 

 to our station. During the lit of enthusiasm which took 

 hold of the country, when it was known that labour was 

 wanted, some grotesque mistakes were committed. Delicate 

 ladies of gentle up-bringing patriotically volunteered for 

 rough country work, far too trying for their constitutions 

 and conflicting with their habits. One of these ladies 

 related her experiences humorously in the August number 

 of Blackwood in 1916. Here evidently was misdirected 

 zeal. However, to country women to the manner born 

 there is absolutely nothing unbefitting in farm work. One 

 may indeed hope that country women will stay on at agri- 

 cultural work on economic grounds when the sentimental 

 inducement of patriotic enthusiasm will have spent its force. 

 After the Maidstone test nothing seems too hard for them. 

 However, wages are, as observed, not everything. There 

 is a good deal more. And that " more " is not likely to 

 be satisfactorily determined by the method which some of 

 the agricultural labourers' most ardent well-wishers in towns 

 have adopted of incontinently urging the application of 

 approved town remedies to rural ills. It is perfectly natural 

 that the position of the neglected rural labourer should 

 have been compared with that of the more favoured towns- 

 man. Under one aspect that has been done here. The 

 contrast is indeed striking. But it by no means follows 

 that what has proved successful in towns, and in industrial 

 centres, will prove equally effective in the country and in 

 agricultural occupation, which is a different thing altogether 

 from industrial. It is therefore idle to press town methods 

 upon Parliament. Our Agriculture wants " industrialis- 

 ing " badly ; but it does not want " urbanising." Aliter 

 cum aliis agendimi. We have had one telling proof of 



