314 CARMARTHEN AND CO-OPERATION 



farms are owned by their occupiers, but the recent rise 

 in the prices of land has been tempting many owners to 

 sell ; and men who had bought their farms twenty or 

 thirty years earlier during the depression were then re- 

 alizing the enhanced values and going out of farming 

 altogether. As a rule these small farms were worked 

 entirely by the owner and his family, and were rather 

 undermanned in consequence. 



Labour was very scarce in the district, because it 

 lies on the edge of the great Glamorganshire coalfield, 

 which for many years had been extremely prosperous 

 and able to pay high wages for comparatively unskilled 

 labour. As it was, single men who live in get 30 to 

 35 a vear with board and lodging free, out of which, 

 if they are keen on farming, they can save enough 

 to be able to take one of the small farms and make 

 a start for themselves. The prospects in the colliery 

 districts were, however, so much more attractive that 

 very few of the younger native-born men could be 

 hired for agricultural work ; and it was here that we 

 first came into contact with what has almost become 

 a characteristic feature of Welsh farming the depend- 

 ence for hired labour upon boys drawn from the 

 industrial schools and reformatories in England. 

 Indeed, so much is this the case that the three B's 

 which the Welsh farmers owe to England have almost 

 become proverbial reformatory boys, basic slag, and 

 barbed wire. This apprenticeship of boys to the Welsh 

 farmers would seem to be a very good outlet for some 

 of the surplus population of the towns and a means of 

 obtaining a new set of recruits for country life. We 

 did not gather, however, that it was effecting any 

 considerable permanent enlistment of men for agri- 

 culture, for the great majority of the boys fail to settle 

 on the land and drift back into other occupations. 



