80 ' The Labour Bill in Farming. 
greater demand for manual labour in high farming. What has 
just been stated as to the farm I am now noticing — that of Mr. 
Mathew, of Knettishall — shows that during three parts of the 
year the stock is properly chargeable with quite half the labour 
employed. Forty years ago Mr. Mathew's father, who then held 
the farm, grew as great an acreage of corn as is now grown, and 
did not employ so many men and boys, nor any machinery 
for the first ten years of his occupation, though he employed 
more horses. One explanation is that he only kept about half 
as many sheep as are now wintered on the same farm, and about 
half as many head of neat stock. All the corn on the farm is 
now threshed by steam. Steam machinery is used for cutting 
chaff and grinding corn, and horse-power for mincing roots and 
breaking cake. All this work used to be done by hand, yet 
the father employed fewer labourers than the son now employs, 
and the father's expenditure for labour continued for some time 
at the rate of about 500/. a year, whereas the son, who uses all 
this steam and horse power, is spending (with 150 more acres, it 
is true) 1100/. in manual labour. 
Mr. Mathew is sowing less corn and trying a system which 
he hopes will make farms of light and mixed soil more self- 
supporting, by rendering them less dependent upon artificial 
grasses, and reducing some of the present heavy items for expen- 
diture upon cake, artificial manure, and labour. This is one of 
the changes already indicated for economising production. He 
has found that, upon light land, sainfoin resists the drought better 
than most other descriptions of feed, and he also attaches great 
importance to the growth of a good plant of mangolds. Assuming, 
therefore, that he thinks it right to grow 20 acres of mangolds 
every year, the course of husbandry upon six plots of 20 acres each 
would be as follows : — 1. Mangolds after barley, instead of small 
seeds. 2. Wheat after mangolds in course. 3. Sainfoin after 
wheat, instead of turnips. 4. Sainfoin instead of barley. 5. 
Sainfoin instead of cloAer, &c. G. Wheat after sainfoin, in 
course. The 3-year-old sainfoin is followed by wheat, and 
there is always an acreage of sainfoin of three dilferent ages 
upon the farm. This crop, it is said, supplies capital feed, 
whether cut for hay, or used in the yard for horses and cattle 
during the summer, or given as chaff, or fed off on the land. 
The acreage so occupied re(|uires no manure and little labour, 
and possesses other advantages which, in the farmer's opinion, 
more than compensate for the loss of 20 acres of barley. Here 
is the yield upon a field of 16 acres of sainfoin during three 
consecutive years: — 18(58. First crop of hay, 33 waggon-loads; 
second crop fed off by lambs. 18()9. — First crop of hay, 35 
waggon-loads ; second crop, 80 sacks of seed. 1870. — First 
