Fortunes for Farmers 



the disastrous third quarter of the last cen- 

 tury. 



But we are looking up again now. Farmers 

 no longer strive for wheat at ^5, and labourers 

 at 1 os. a week — they realize that it will not do; 

 a population of small holders is again rising and 

 flourishing, and during the last twenty years 

 labour has made greater strides than in the previous 

 hundred. If labour can get the plot of land easily 

 it will stay in the country rather than flock into 

 the towns. This is the crux of the matter and 

 our business must be to make it easier for them. 

 We cannot take away from the descendants of 

 those robbers the land they stole, it has changed 

 hands too often, but we can make it possible for 

 it to be easily split up again with France as our 

 ideal. Also we can make it easier for them to obtain 

 credit, which is necessary, and do our best for 

 the return of Merry England. 



Let us have anything rather than the Bad Old 

 Times. If you want to know what they were, 

 ask any old labourer how he was brought up. I 

 asked one of eleven children some time ago. 

 "Well," he said, "we lived on sop." Sop! — 

 bread and water! — think of it! They sometimes 

 tasted meat, he said, on Sundays, and his first suit 

 was an old sack. Their father was an industrious 

 labourer, and the children all went to work 



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