30 Agriculture and the Community. 



But low wages and bad housing- were not unknown in 

 the towns, and I think it would be found that many of the 

 farm workers who left the country earned little more at 

 the end of the year in the town or lived in any better 

 houses than they had in the country. Other causes peculiar 

 to the country operated to send the workers away from 

 the farms. I believe that one potent cause was the tied 

 house. A man who lives in a house directly under the eye 

 of his employer, and whose home as well as his employ- 

 ment is at the mercy of that employer, has less freedom 

 and has to submit more to the will of his employer than 

 a workman who comes under his employer's control only 

 while at work. The employer dominates the workmen 

 not only industrially but socially and politically. There 

 may be no direct pressure exercised, but the relationship 

 is one under which any man of spirit and independence 

 chafes, and from which he seeks the first opportunity of 

 escaping. Other workers such as the miners live under 

 similar conditions, but the aggregation of these workers 

 in larger communities makes if: easier to develop a com- 

 munal and class spirit which forms a protection against 

 the encroachments of individual employers. The farm 

 workers had not the same opportunities of creating their 

 own associations for defensive purposes in which they 

 could feel the consciousness of a common strength and 

 purpose. Faced with similar difficulties the industrial 

 workers found their escape in the growth of the trade 

 unions, co-operative societies, and other voluntary 

 organisations. They threw up their own leaders and the 

 most vigorous and spirited of their class found in these 

 organisations an outlet for their energies and abilities 



