CHAPTEE XXII. 



AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS AND ESTATE SCHOOLS. 

 SECTION 1. Farm and Estate Labourers. 



IN any department of business, the success of those who carry it on 

 depends very much on the character of the work-people they employ. 

 Where these are not intelligent and well skilled in their duties, the work 

 performed by them is for the most part of an inferior description, and the 

 results unsatisfactory ; consequently the employers realise small profits 

 compared with those that are realised in the same kind of business by 

 men who employ only well-qualified workmen. If this holds good in 

 regard to the management of business generally, it does so in farming 

 especially ; for wherever we find inferior workmen employed on farms, 

 the labour is indifferently performed, and the produce small accordingly. 

 Seeing that such is the case in regard to farm-labourers, it certainly is a 

 matter of very great importance to the interests of all farmers that they 

 secure the services of intelligent and well-qualified men for the different 

 branches of work on their farms. Comparatively few farmers take this 

 view in regard to their workmen, however, as a large proportion of them 

 act as if ploughmen in general required only the qualifications of superior 

 bodily strength to make them superior workmen. Many farmers, in engag- 

 ing ploiighmen, look to their outward bulk and quality of muscle, more 

 than to their intelligence and general ability, much in the same way as 

 they would in choosing a horse for work. This is a very great mistake, as 

 every observant farmer well knows that even a small-bodied man, if he is 

 intelligent, active, and skilful, makes a very much better ploughman than 

 a large-bodied one who is not so well qualified otherwise. In Scotland I 

 have found farm-labourers generally much more intelligent than the same 

 class in England, and there can be no doubt that much of the success 

 of the Scottish farmers is to be attributed to the superior character of 

 the workmen they employ. This superiority of the Scottish agricultural 

 labourers is to be traced chiefly to the advantages they derive from the 

 education they generally receive in their early youth in the parochial 



