WHAT OF THE HARVEST ? 329 



has been the commonly expressed sentiment. But the 

 landlord is receding more and more into the background ; and 

 the farmer, as owner, is rapidly taking his place. 



More and more the farmer and the farm labourer will be 

 drawn together, not only on agricultural wages boards and 

 committees but also on the new Council of Agriculture for 

 England J in which the agricultural labourer is to take a seat 

 by statutory right. He may be selected to sit as an expert 

 on a County Agricultural Committee. The State now recog- 

 nises that he is as much interested in good husbandry as the 

 fanner, and as there are three labourers to one farmer, the 

 prosperity of the industry is even more his concern than the 

 farmer's. 



The farm labourer's social status has altered for the better 

 in war-time, and with this improvement we may look for a 

 change in the attitude of the girls to the farm worker as 

 a life -companion. No longer, let us hope, shall we hear 

 wives of farm labourers imploring their daughters, as 

 one mother implored her daughter who is known to me, 

 " Promise me never to marry a farm labourer, my dear." 

 She promised, and did not marry a farm labourer. Neverthe- 

 less she never deserted her class, but to-day sits on a Wages 

 Committee as a representative of the workers. Since the 

 passing of the Corn Production Act the farm worker has 

 become socially a more desirable mate than the smart young 

 gardener at the big house, for the farm worker has a wage 

 higher than the gardener's. When employers refused to pay 

 their gardeners the labourer's wage the gardener on many 

 an estate stepped up and not down the social scale as he 

 became a farm worker. 



Cottage girls who have watched during war-time rich 

 men doing work of " national importance " in loading tum- 

 brils with dung with the exalted look of a saint ; who have 

 seen the squire's and the vicar's daughters working as field 

 labourer's, milking cows and cleaning out byres, have come to 

 realise that there is no indignity in farm work that the indig- 

 nity lies only in the sordid conditions which have prevailed. 



The objection to farm work on the part of cottage women, 



1 Vide Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries Act, December, 1919. 



