90 PROBLEMS OF VILLAGE LIFE 



prospects of promotion and increased pay. 

 The general prospect before the agricultural 

 labourer is, as a rule, singularly cheerless. 

 When a childhood of toil has been left behind 

 and the adult farm-hand receives the full 

 weekly wage, the economic high-water mark 

 is reached, and the only alteration in his 

 earnings will be an inevitable decrease when 

 a wife and children fall to his lot and in- 

 creasing age gradually lessens his value. The 

 monotonous toil, the meagre returns, the 

 hopeless outlook were easier to endure half 

 a century ago. Until the last few years no 

 less than 45 per cent, of our agricultural 

 labourers were in their old age condemned 

 either to outdoor " relief " or the virtual 

 imprisonment of a workhouse. The passing 

 of the Old-Age Pensions Acts, a beneficent 

 measure appreciated far more in the villages 

 than the towns, has doubtless saved many 

 country-folk from the pauperism which would 

 otherwise have proved their natural fate. 

 The normal career of an agricultural labourer 

 had hitherto been poverty and hard work 

 from the cradle to old age, with pauperism in 

 the evening of his days. But now a new 

 spirit of hopefulness has reached the younger 

 generation in our country parishes. Young 

 women leave one " situation " after another 



