LABOUR. 305 



for a steady, gradual rise of the labouring population, both 

 social and economic, for the gradual accumulation of some 

 possessions, the acquisition of greater skill and general 

 knowledge, the ascent of " Hodge " into the higher strata 

 of the body politic, in which his industrial brother, more 

 favoured by circumstances, has preceded him by some 

 decades. Then also the wish of our urban rural 

 reformers is likely to be realised, namely, that of 

 seeing the agricultural labourer following the steel worker 

 and the engineer on the track of " combination " and 

 " organisation." For it is his absolute subjection and 

 poverty rather than mere dispersion which stands in the 

 way at present. 



Here is another " Rhodus " at which a decisive jump 

 has to be taken, for making which landowners' confidence, 

 such as — coupled with judicious selection of fit men — has 

 been given by the Duke of Bedford to his purchasers of 

 land at Maulden or, more probably — because the scale 

 will have to be much larger — financial advances from the 

 community, will be needed. 



For land cannot be acquired by the landless without 

 such assistance. They cannot be expected, as they are 

 now situated, to work up to it, even within the Hmits set 

 up in Lord Chaphn's Act of 1892, at any rate on a large 

 scale. Wherever we look in other lands we find that the 

 acquisition of a holding of their own — and when they have 

 got it, its gradual extension — forms the ideal and settled 

 aim of every one engaged in agricultural labour. The 

 German farm servant — from the day when he engages 

 himself as " bullock boy," which is as a rule the lowest 

 grade to be occupied — lays by carefully out of his scanty 

 wages, to save up a small sum — truly derisory it would 

 appear to ourselves — wherewith to commence his farming 

 for his own account, while still taking employment with 

 others. The maid whom Fate has destined subsequently 

 to become his helpmate— though they neither of them know 

 anything about this at the time— does the same thing. And 

 their two little hoards of savings suffice, in a country where 

 land is freely saleable and much divided, and where great 



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