114 THE MAKING OF NEW LAND 



revival, had been shut down only a few years ago, 

 but we were given to understand that the farmers 

 understood the cultivation of flax and would willingly 

 grow it again if they could find a market for the 

 fibre. Some attempt ought to be made to see if 

 the industry cannot be revived in England ; probably 

 it died away because the all-important retting process, 

 by which the fibre is set free in the straw, was left 

 in the hands of the individual farmers, with the 

 inevitable result of a variable and parti-coloured 

 product for which the best price could not be obtained. 

 The farmers' work ought to be confined to growing 

 the flax, leaving the retting and all the processes 

 of manufacture to a central factory ; on these lines 

 it is possible that the growth of this valuable crop 

 might be revived, especially as linseed oil, which is 

 crushed out of the flax seeds, has doubled in price 

 during the last few years. Crops yielding a large 

 monetary return are needed in that district, for rents 

 are high and labour well paid. Day labourers received 

 2s. pd. a day, with double in harvest time; we again 

 saw women at work in the fields, but the potato 

 lifting is largely done by immigrant Irish labourers, 

 who are so thoroughly a part of the system that on 

 all the farms there is a large barn known as the 

 " Paddy House," in which they live. We do not 

 hear of any great desire on the part of the young 

 men to move to the ironworks or the shipping ; some 

 had tried it and had come back to the easier work 

 on the land. For the men, as for the masters, farming 

 in these West Riding and Lincoln flats seems fairly 

 prosperous ; it is not perhaps the most attractive sort 

 of agriculture, but it is a good driving business which 

 is getting out of the land something approaching the 

 highest yield that is profitable. 



