564 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



Moreover, even of those young men who remain, but few care to 

 become masters of their work. Here is an instance of which I 

 have just been told, in September, 1902. The technical com- 

 mittee of the Norfolk County Council allotted to Ditchingham and 

 a group of three or four other parishes g to be given in prizes 

 at a ploughing competition. From the whole parish of Ditch- 

 ingham with its population of about 1 1 00 but one man has 

 entered a servant of my own and from the group of parishes, 

 I am informed, not a single lad is forthcoming, although a sum of 

 5 was set aside to be given as prizes in the boys' ploughing 

 class. The fact is, of course, that the youth of this, as of other 

 districts, does not wish to learn to plough, even when bribed so to 

 do with prizes, and that here, before long, ploughmen, or any 

 skilled labourers, will, to all appearances, be scarce indeed. 



To sum up the real causes of this ominous migration of the 

 blood and sinew of the race : they are, I take it, first, that the 

 peasant has nothing to tie him to the land, on which he is a wage- 

 earner without outlook ; secondly, our system of education does 

 not allow him to come in actual contact with that land until he is 

 too old to learn to love it ; thirdly, in many cases, proper homes 

 with good gardens are not provided for him in the villages. Up 

 to the seventeenth century I believe that most of the English soil 

 was owned by small yeomen, and even by peasants, who in the be- 

 ginning acquired it on the condition of the rendering of certain 

 services to a feudal lord, which ultimately were compounded for 

 by a money fine, thus turning them into copyholders. Even the 

 humblest cottager had his four acres of grass or garden about 

 his dwelling. 



In time all this was changed : the small-holders were bought 

 out and sank into a condition of great misery, being forced to live 

 like swine, and as labourers to take whatever wage was flung to 

 them. Doubtless they wished to depart in those days, but there 

 was nowhere to go, and no means of going. So they stayed until, 

 some thirty years since, their eyes were opened. 



What will suffice to abate the evil for it is a great and grow- 

 ing evil ? Better wages ? In most cases and localities they are 

 impossible unless the prices of farm products alter very materially. 



