290 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



was coming. He put all his hands and all his teams on the 

 carrying, and two nights running we carried up to eleven 

 o'clock at night. As the last wagon rumbled into the barn 

 — for there are barns there — the first drops of rain came 

 down " pop, pop." And it rained on at a stretch for 

 forty-eight hours together, after which a wet season followed. 

 Nearly all the corn in a wide district was sprouted, and it 

 came to be a year of bad bread. So far, however, from 

 grudging the extra labour that my friend's men and women 

 had been put to, they rejoiced heartily with their master 

 over the saved harvest. Agricultural labour is not wearing, 

 like industrial or other urban labour. It is fatiguing and 

 serves to give you healthy sleep. But it does not weaken 

 the nerves or vital organs. On the contrary, if you only 

 abstain from making young folk carry too heavy weights, 

 it strengthens them. More opportunities for recreation 

 and for the cultivation of the intellect and the graces of 

 life, and greater freedom in respect of hours, there certainly 

 ought to be. And these things may be provided without 

 forcing the free child of Nature into the strait-waistcoat 

 of hard and fast factory regulations, to be timed by the 

 stroke of the clock. Such modification is possible without 

 undue interference with the natural flow and ebb tides of 

 rural occupation. But while seed time and harvest remain 

 you cannot put a farm under a rainproof roof or provide 

 sunshine at pleasure by electric lighting. The country 

 requires its own horarium, the ruling feature of which must 

 be elasticity. 



Looking at the matter with a view to improving it, let 

 us ask : What was it that enabled the industrial labourer 

 so materially to improve his position, once he was constitu- 

 tionally lifted into equality with other citizens, while his 

 agricultural brother continued to lag helplessly behind, in 

 bondage practically — unless he desert his calling — on to 

 the great day ? 



The answer is simple. It consists of the one word : 

 Freedom. The industrial labourer had been given — and 

 given fully — M. Thiers' "necessary liberties." Bound he 

 might still be at the outset. But even then his bondage 



