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II. — Farm Labourers, their Friendly Societies, and the Poor 
Law. By the Rev. J. Y. Stkatton, Rector of Ditton, Kent. 
The following article will treat of the means of improving the 
condition of the agricultural classes of this country, by the 
development of trustworthy insurances suited to their requirements. 
It will be necessary to our purpose to consider the bearing of the 
Poor Law, and the influences exerted by it in diminishing and 
retarding efforts which might be made by farm labourers to 
attain a position superior to that now commonly occupied by 
them, and alterations will be suggested in the mode of affording 
relief and collecting the rate, by the adoption of which labourers 
who now on their view of the rate commonly waste their surplus 
wages in societies, miscalled benefit clubs, may be induced and 
encouraged either to improve and reform their societies, or to 
forsake them and join better. 
Burial societies, their cost and management, will form no 
part of our subject. A Commission of Enquiry can alone deal 
satisfactorily with them, and there is sufficient in the state of 
these societies to render enquiry under a Royal Commission 
desirable, even if there were no other classes of industrial 
insurance than burial societies in need of attention.* Neither 
shall we deal with the state of the friendly societies of the 
superior artisan and labourer, who commonly seek such advice 
and protection as the Registrar-General is able to afford them. 
The members of these institutions have for many years struggled 
hard to obtain a provision for their need, such as the friendly 
society offers, and now that many difficulties, among which want 
of money is not to be reckoned, have been overcome, they will 
find their task less arduous than hitherto. That they will 
succeed in the long run in securing an independent provision by 
insurances best adapted to their wants is not so much a matter 
of uncertainty as a question of time. 
No such hopeful prospect, however, is in store for those whose 
insurances demand our special attention, and whose lot is cast 
within the verge of pauperism. In order to understand the 
construction and cost, the management and provision of their 
benefit societies, reference must be made to the Poor Law. And 
we are glad that at length the necessity of enquiry into the 
bearing of the Poor Law or Friendly Societies is recognised. 
* The Commission on the Employment of Children, Young Persons, and 
Women in Agriculture, after reporting that the attention of four of the Assistant- 
Commissioners was specially directed to the subject of benefit societies, reports 
that it is " one of far too wide a nature, embracing as it does the town as well as 
the country populations, to be capable of beiug exhaustively dealt with in the 
course of our enquiries." 
