520 
Coio-Keeping hy Farm Labourers. 
At Loton Park, on the home farm, four labourers out of six 
have grass-lands and keep cows. Their wives attend to the 
cow and do almost all the labour required, and there has never 
been the slightest difficulty in their wishing to be at home when 
wanted on the farm. The net profit to them from a cow has 
been 5s. or 6s. a week. 
On several estates which I have lately visited, where the 
labourers have been encouraged to keep cows on a well-organ- 
ized system, the tenants have expressed themselves in language 
very similar to that of a tenant farmer whom Sir Baldwyn 
quotes. He says : " It is quite remarkable what effect the pos- 
session of a cow-gate has upon a labourer ; he seems quite a 
different person ; he does his work much better, in an honest, 
cheerful way, as if conscious that he was not forgotten by those 
who employed him." 
Most unfortunately neither tenants nor landlords, as a rule, are 
readers of agricultural literature. Mr. Dent, of Ribston Hall, who 
has cordially assisted my inquiries, devoted several pages to the 
subject of labourers keeping cows in his very able paper in this 
" Journal," on " The Condition of the Agricultural Labourer," 
1871, p. 351. These few lines may perhaps be allowed to 
reappear. " In the Northern and Midland Counties, again, the 
labourer very often has the advantage of such an allotment of 
grass land as enables him to keep a cow, and to obtain milk for 
his children, besides realising some money by the labour of his 
wife and family on his own land, without their going out to 
work for hire ; and there is, perhaps, no method by which a 
landlord can more certainly add to the comfort of the married 
labourer than by letting to him grass for a cow." 
Writing from Ribston Hall, Wetherby, Mr. Dent describes 
the practice on his estate as follows : — 
" Milk is most desirable, and very difficult to obtain. Many farmers 
here do not keep more than one or two cows for the supply of milk and butter 
for their own use, preferring to buy Irish bullocks and feed them, to the 
breeding and rearing of stock. 
" The cow should be kept, I think, by the man himself; there is'always 
this difficulty about keejiing cows ; if a man has one he is desirous to have 
land enough to keep two, and then Ms time is much occupied in looking after 
liis own stock. 
" The labourer rents directly under the land-owner. 
" I find that about forty-five years ago there were on this estate forty- 
four small occupiers, the smallest about 2 acres, the largest up to 17. Many 
of them occupied from 3 to 5 acres, and these were labourers keeping cows. 
They would mow for hay about an acre and a half, and many of them had a 
rood of arable allotments, on which they grew straw. Of these small occupa- 
tions about thirty-one now exist. 
" At the earlier period, more than half the occupiers had separate takes, 
although one meadow of about 16 acres was and still is let amongst cottagers 
to mow, and there are still three or four pastures shared in common by two 
