Economics of the Size of Farms 173 



They specially dislike all Sunday work, such as is of course required 

 on a dairy-farm 1 . They want to have their Sundays free for enjoy- 

 ment and for their best clothes, and not to be obliged to be at the 

 cow-sheds at certain hours to milk or feed the cows. Nor is it the 

 Sunday work only, but the kind of work involved in dairying, which 

 makes them object to service on a dairy-farm. A Yorkshire labourer* 

 told me that both he and others had found that the younger men 

 liked attending to horses, but not to cattle. The work was dirty, and 

 in the evening the intolerable milking, with the accompanying dirty 

 boots, came all over again. The older men, he said, had enjoyed looking 

 after the cows, but the younger ones preferred any other kind of 

 work. Such being the case, it is not wonderful that loud complaints 

 are heard that the milking is done carelessly, lazily and dirtily. Such 

 complaints come not only from large employers, but also from scientific 

 students of English dairying methods 3 . " Cultivate the acquaintance 

 of your cows, treat them kindly, and teach them to regard you as their 

 best friend ; cows love kind treatment, and we may rest assured that 

 it will pay," says Professor Thonger 4 with undoubted truth. But his 

 words prove the necessity that the handling and care of the cows 

 should be done by their owner. " Friendly " treatment is not to 

 be expected from wage-labourers. If a farmer succeeds in finding 

 men to do the hated milking, no doubt with suppressed ill-will, he 

 has to be constantly on the watch lest their dislike of the work should 

 find expression in some careless or unkind handling of the beasts, and 

 so injure their health and the quality of their milk 5 . Nothing but 

 the lively interest taken by the occupier and his family can produce 

 the loving attention needed for the work. Agriculturists are to be 

 found all over the country who have given up their dairies at the 

 moment when it became impossible for members of their families 

 themselves to do the work, whether because the wife became an 

 invalid, or because the daughter married, or from whatever other 

 cause. They preferred (and especially is this the case with the 

 tenants of medium-sized farms) to turn to other branches of agriculture 

 rather than to employ outside labour in the cow-sheds when home 

 labour failed. But the large farmer is from the very beginning subject 



1 Report on the Earnings of Agricultural Labourers ', 1900, p. 54. 



2 Mr William Johnson, High Farm, Brandsby, Yorkshire. 



3 Sheldon, The Farm and the Dairy, p. 71. Cp. also what is said on this point in the 

 Estate Book, 1906, p. 278. 



4 C. G. Freer Thonger, Some Essentials of Successful Dairying, in the Journal of the 

 Bath etc. Society, 1903, p. 82. 



5 Burn, op. cit. p. 320. 



