98 
The Allotment System. 
The allotments now referred to lie in Silsoe and the ncig^h- 
bouring parishes near Ampthill, in that count} . They are 618 
in number and held by 584: tenants. They are 294 acres in ex- 
tent, averaging as nearly as possible half an acre to every allottee. 
The soil is of various character and quality, between the ex- 
tremes of very light sand and stiff calcareous clay. Lying as the 
district does geologically below the chalk, where a series of 
alternating clav and sand beds occur, this extreme variety of soil 
is easily accounted for. With the exception of one or two fields 
in the parish of Clophill, where the soil is very light, and some 
portions of an extremely stiff character in the parishes of Graven- 
hurst, the land is well adapted for garden culture. Much of it 
is remarkably productive, owing this character to its fortunate 
geological position as well as to good cultivation. Nothing could 
look better than the loamy and light soils of Silsoe and Flitton 
last May under allotment culture. The rents vary from 8s. to 
18s. a rood ; the poor's and other rates, and the cost of keeping 
roads and hedges in repair, being borne by the landlord. Of a 
rental exceeding 1500/. in allotment gardens and cottages there 
was an arrear of only 11. 15s. %d. last year, and that was in the 
case of a widow who, during that season, had lost her husband 
by sudden death, and to whom the rent would be forgiven. This 
fact is of itself sufficient to prove the value of these gardens to 
the labourer and the safety of the system to the landowner. 
That there is a special fitness belonging to it in the neighbour- 
hood of Silsoe, making it there more than usually advantageous 
to the tenant farmer, may also be admitted ; but everywhere the 
tenantry are interested directly and materially in such a condition 
of the labourer as shall both diminish poor's rates, and, by in- 
creasing their means, give both labourers and children a certain 
facility for the prevalence ultimately of a better education among 
them. 
The labouring population in the neighbourhood of Silsoe is 
unusually dense for a purely agricultural district. The wages 
are 9s. or 10s. a week, paid generally by the piece, even to men 
whose services are engaged by the year. This piecework pay- 
ment has not proved inconsistent with that friendly and long- 
continued relationship between master and men, founded on 
mutual good-will, which is tlie best guarantee of the worth and 
respectability of both classes in so many English country districts. 
There are as many instances of tliis kind in this district of piece- 
work payment and allotments, both of which are supposed to 
create undue independence, as tliere are elsewhere. The fact 
is that, here as everywiiere, an interest in the welfare of tlie 
labouring man, shown by endeavours to put him in the way of 
self-improvement, produces its natural fruit in that goodwill on 
which social welfare depends. 
