CHAPTER II 



RURAL ENGLAND OF TO-DAY 



DESPITE the great variety of the conditions 

 which prevail in our rural districts, it is possible 

 to distinguish certain broad outlines and to 

 make certain generalizations ; and it is with 

 these that a book such as the present must 

 necessarily deal. Agricultural England is 

 very far, of course, from being homogeneous. 

 What is true of the dales of Yorkshire may not 

 be true of the downs of Wiltshire, Hampshire, 

 and Sussex ; and the student of the arable 

 districts of East Anglia may find himself 

 almost in a new world when he comes among 

 the stock and dairy farmers of the Western 

 counties. The agricultural labourer of the 

 North earns considerably higher wages than 

 his brother of the South, and shares, to some 

 extent, in the self-confident and independent 

 character of the artisans of great industrial 

 towns. The Southern labourer is the child 

 of an older civilization, more conservative, 

 more humble, more easily cowed, more 

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