THE ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER 563 



Large holdings, however, which require a great deal of capital, 

 are everywhere becoming hard to let, since, save in very excep- 

 tional instances, farmers cannot hope even to do more than pay 

 their rent and make a livelihood. The old days when they could 

 save have gone by ; indeed, I believe that a great deal of money 

 which was made out of the land in the past is slowly being 

 dissipated upon it in the present. 



In short, the industry, speaking generally, is decaying ; but it 

 still endures, in spite of bad prices, labour troubles, and indifferent 

 seasons. How long it will endure in the absence of some marked 

 change for the better is another question. Such a change the 

 harvest of 1902 with English wheat at less than 25 s. the quarter, 

 a price at which it cannot pay to grow, certainly has not produced. 

 That question is one which time alone can answer, but whatever 

 happens doubtless the best lands will always find tenants. 



To come to the third class, that of the labouring men, 

 undeniably they are more prosperous today than ever they have 

 been before. Employment is plentiful ; wages, by comparison, are 

 high, in some places higher than the land can afford to pay, 

 food and other necessaries are very cheap. 



In face of these advantages, however, the rural labourer has 

 never been more discontented than he is at present. That, in his 

 own degree, he is doing the best of the three great classes con- 

 nected with the land does not appease him in the least. The dif- 

 fusion of newspapers, the system of board school education, and 

 the restless spirit of our age have changed him, so that nowadays 

 it is his main ambition to escape from the soil where he was bred 

 and try his fortune in the cities. This is not wonderful, for there 

 are high wages, company, and amusement, with shorter hours of 

 work. Moreover, on the land he has no prospects : a labourer he 

 is, and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred a labourer he must 

 remain. Lastly, in many instances, his cottage accommodation is 

 very bad ; indeed I have found wretched and insufficient dwell- 

 ings to be a great factor in the hastening of the rural exodus ; 

 and he forgets that in the town it will probably be worse. 

 So he goes, leaving behind him half-tilled fields and shrinking 

 hamlets. 



