PREFACE 9 



Mr. Rider Haggard, " cares twopence how 

 many quarters of wheat we produce." In a 

 still greater degree does the existence of the 

 poorer type of villager tend to be ignored. 

 The valuable information contained in Rural 

 England is derived almost entirely from 

 squires, farmers and land agents : how 

 seldom in these pages do we come across 

 conversations with farm labourers. Mr. 

 Wilson Fox's careful statistics of agricultural 

 wages would have been even more reliable 

 had they not been based so largely on returns 

 made by employers. At " Fat Stock Dinners " 

 and the like, the toast of " Agriculture " 

 always has reference to the prosperity of 

 landlords and farmers : and, in response, you 

 will hear employers and landagents regretting 

 the " good old days of agriculture," when 

 wheat was GO/- a quarter and the labourers 

 suffered cruelly from dear food and wretched 

 wages. It is a significant fact that the only 

 complete and scientific history of the English 

 agricultural labourer has been written by a 

 foreigner, Herr Hasbach. No apology, there- 

 fore, is needed by any writer who strives, in 

 however humble a fashion, to focus the atten- 

 tion of his fellow-citizens on the problems of 

 rural England. 



Against one danger any author who deals 



