94 
The Labour Bill in Farming. 
the conclusion that the chief prejudice against long hirings lies 
with employers. " Farmers in this neighbourhood," writes a 
Cambridgeshire farmer, " are not inclined to hire men for 
a length of time with a view to prevent the inconvenience of 
strikes. On the contrary, the feeling is that, if a discontented 
man were bound for a term, he would work so unsatisfactorily 
that a farmer would be glad to be rid of him at any price." But 
why should it be assumed that men would be discontented if 
they entered into such engagements with their eyes open ? And 
why should a mode of hiring almost universal in Scotland and 
the North of England be impracticable or unsatisfactory in the 
South, where long hirings, as we have seen, do in fact prevail 
partially at present ? If the northern practice became general, 
it would have more than one useful result. The tie between 
master and man would become closer, and labourers would be 
less liable to estrangement from employers at the instance of 
strangers. The labourers would also feel a certainty of steady 
employment. Their wages would be paid in regular weekly 
sums, instead of being brought up to a respectable average of 
cash payments by high wages during a single month of the year. 
On the other hand, employers would be relieved from the fear 
of being left without labour at seed-time or harvest, or other 
critical periods ; and they would know what their labour bill 
would be during the year, instead of feeling that they were 
exposed, at a week's notice, to demands from their labourers 
Avliich might upset all their calculations of profit, and would 
have materially altered their course of cultivation had they fore- 
seen such demands. 
Again, in reading this Forfarshire letter, one cannot avoid 
the impression that, if the Scotch hind works harder than the 
Southern labourer — a fact which seems to be generally admitted 
— the Southern farmers have not secured from the introduction 
of machinery the same saving in manual labour which has been 
effected by farmers across the Tweed. The smallness of the 
regular staff of labourers upon this and other Scotch farms of 
which one hears, compared with the staff maintained upon 
English farms of equal acreage, may be in part explained by 
the greater energy thrown into the work of the Scotch peasantry, 
and this may be an affair of thew and sinew and race. Is 
it not, however, also due in no small degree to stricter super- 
vision by the Northman, a rigorous resolve to have money's 
worth for money, care in noting when labour has been ren- 
dered superfluous by machinery, and the maintenance of 
the smallest possible establishment for ordinary farm-work, 
supplemented by unskilled labour on extraordinary occa- 
sions? One would make this suggestion with greater hesi- 
