Home Colonisation 2 1 7 



have had some experience of agricultural work, and who for the sake of 

 the health of themselves or their family want to get into the country, even if 

 they can only make a smaller income there. Secondly, town workers who see 

 that in consequence of increasing age, or of the depression of their trade, they 

 are likely to lose their employment in a few years, and drop to the position 

 of casual labourers. 



There is no doubt that there is a considerable number of men of this 

 latter type desirous of getting onto the land. The action of some of the 

 labouring people of Leicester, most of them employed in the boot trade, is 

 characteristic. A number of the factory workers put themselves in possession 

 of allotments, having organised co-operatively for the purpose 1 : and one of 

 their objects, as reported by Mr E. A. Pratt 2 , was to use these allotments as 

 a stage towards and an education for the taking of a small holding. And in 

 fact the attempt to obtain allotments was soon followed by the formation in 

 the same district of a co-operative association for the creation of small 

 holdings 3 . Of town-dwellers of quite another type Mr Pratt writes 4 : 

 "Apart from the factory workers who have gained experience on allotments... 

 there are men who, though intelligent, capable, and willing, are physically 

 unfit for the stress and strain of life in great cities, especially when close 

 confinement in an office or counting-house may be included therein. Others 

 there are who, though considered 'too old' for the employment on which 

 they have hitherto been engaged, still possess an amount of energy and vigour, 

 the devotion of which to a healthy rural pursuit would... provide them with 



a fresh and more or less profitable employment Others, again, the sons of 



manufacturers, business men, or professional men, might well start in the 

 country in some occupation which either appealed to their tastes more, or 

 would suit the condition of their health better, than following in the footsteps 

 of their fathers." 



Evidently the material available for home colonisation purposes from 

 industrial employments or of the town type is of very various kinds ; it is 

 in this respect very different from the material provided by the class first 

 considered, which consisted mainly of agricultural labourers, and to some 

 extent of farmers' or bailiffs' sons. It is certainly at first surprising to find 

 that agricultural life does attract non-agricultural sections of the population ; 

 the continued and well-grounded complaints of a rural exodus naturally seem 

 to point in the other direction. Objections to any such movement were made 

 before the Committee of 1906. Men well acquainted with the conditions 

 declared that there was no sense in planting inexperienced townsmen on the 



1 According to the Annual Report of the Agricultural Organisation Society for 1908, one 

 of these co-operative societies, the Winchester and District Allotment Holders Association, 

 rented 86 acres and had 660 members. 



2 E. A. Pratt, The Transition in Agriculture, 1906, p. 268. 



3 Small Holdings Report, 1906, Minutes, qu. 5059. 



4 Pratt, op. cit. p. 306. 



