LABOUR. 301 



him out, nor serve as a means for his defrauding his employer. 

 Rather will it act as a stimulus, sharpening his understanding 

 of the object of labour and sweetening his toil by the prospect 

 of its gain. 



From the time of Queen Elizabeth downward — who in 

 1589, the year after our victory over the Spanish Armada, 

 put her signature to the famous statute which ordered 

 (ineffectually, as it proved to be) that " four acres of land 

 should be attached to each cottage let to an agricultural 

 labourer," we have acknowledged the desirability of endow- 

 ing the agricultural labourer with land for his own private 

 cultivation. The unnamed " Country Gentleman " quoted, 

 in 1772 with approval by the first Board of Agriculture, 

 which endorsed his recommendation, demanded that " a 

 sufficient portion of land should be attached to their (the 

 agricultural labourers') cottages, to enable them to keep 

 a cow or two." Arthur Young in 1779 suggested that " all 

 labourers should be assigned a garden and grass-land for 

 the keep of a cow " ; and in 1801 he particularly urged 

 that all Acts of Parliament for the reclamation of wastes 

 should attach enough land to every cottage to provide 

 summer and winter keep for a cow." Writing a little 

 later he " deplored the loss of the golden opportunity of 

 the remarkable revival of Agriculture in the period of 

 about 1783 to 1813 " (when ownership spread in an unpre- 

 cedented fashion), " of attaching land to the homes of the 

 cottagers." About the same time there was a general 

 complaint that agricultural labourers — like the famous 

 mariner who, with " water, water everywhere," had " not 

 a drop to drink " — living in the midst of cows, could not 

 obtain any milk, all the country milk going — like the butter 

 to-day in the same districts, where the economy of margarine 

 for home consumption is practised, to the children's detri- 

 ment — to the towns for money. The Poor Law Commis- 

 sioners of 1834 reported that the holding of an allotment 

 meant, in those days, the equivalent of an addition of 

 two shilHngs a week to wages, in addition to which there 

 was "money saved." Men spent less at the public-house 

 and were less dependent upon shopkeepers for their nourish- 



