true, but Nature is Nature, and must have its way, and it is useless
to expect more than one crop per annum, and any talk of three or
four crops is perfectly visionary. 'Visionary,' by the way, is a
very favourite word with so-called practical men. But the stern
logic of figures, of pounds, shillings, and pence, proves that the
present condition of affairs cannot last much longer, and they are
the true 'visionaries' who imagine that it can. This enormous loss
of time, this idleness, must be obviated somehow. It is a question
whether the millions of money at present sunk in agriculture are not
a dead loss to the country; whether they could not be far more
profitably employed in developing manufacturing industries, or in
utilizing for home consumption the enormous resources of Southern
America and Australasia; whether we should not get more to eat, and
cheaper, if such was the case. Such a low rate of interest as is now
obtained in agriculture--and an interest by no means secure either,
for a bad season may at any time reduce it, and even a too good
season--such a state of things is a loss, if not a curse. It is
questionable whether the million or so of labourers representing a
potential amount of force almost incalculable, and the thousands of
young farmers throbbing with health and vigour, eager _to do_, would
not return a far larger amount of good to the world and to
themselves if, instead of waiting for the idle earth at home to
bring forth, they were transported bodily to the broad savannahs and
prairies, and were sending to the mother-country innumerable
shiploads of meat and corn--unless, indeed, we can discover some
method by which our idle earth shall be made to labour more
frequently. This million or so of labourers and these thousands of
young, powerfully made farmers literally do nothing at all for a
third the year but wait, wait for the idle earth. The of strength,
the will, the vigour latent in them is wasted. They do not enjoy
this waiting by any means. The young agriculturist chafes under the
delay, and is eager _to do_. They can hunt and course hares, 'tis
true, but that is feeble excitement indeed, and feminine in
comparison with the serious work which brings in money.
The idleness of arable and pasture land is as nothing compared to
the idleness of the wide, rolling downs. These downs are of immense
extent, and stretch through the very heart of the country. They
maintain sheep, but in how small a proportion to the acreage! In the
spring and summer the short herbage is cropped by the sheep; but it
is short, and it requires a large tract to keep a moderate flock. In
the winter the down is left to the hares and fieldfares. It has just
as long a period of absolute idleness as the arable and pasture
land, and when in work the yield is so very, very small.
After all, the very deepest ploughing is but scratching the surface.
The earth at five feet beneath the level has not been disturbed for
countless centuries. Nor would it pay to turn up this subsoil over
large areas, for it is nothing but clay, as many a man has found to
his cost who, in the hope of a heavier crop, has dug up his garden
half a spade deeper than usual. But when the soil really is good at
that depth, we cannot get at it so as to turn it to practical
account. The thin stratum of artificial manure which is sown is no
more in comparison than a single shower after a drought of months;
yet to sow too much would destroy the effect. No blame, then, falls
upon the agriculturist, who is only too anxious to get a larger
produce. It is useless charging him with incompetency. What
countless experiments have been tried to increase the crop: to see
if some new system cannot be introduced! With all its progress, how
little real advance has agriculture made! All because of the
stubborn, idle earth. Will not science some day come to our aid, and
show how two crops or three may be grown in our short summers; or
how we may even overcome the chill hand of winter? Science has got
as far as this: it recognizes the enormous latent forces surrounding
us--electricity, magnetism; some day, perhaps, it may be able to
utilize them. It recognizes the truly overwhelming amount of force
which the sun of summer pours down upon our fields, and of which we
really make no use. To recognize the existence of a power is the
first step towards employing it. Till it was granted that there was
a power in steam the locomotive was impossible.
It would be easy to swell this notice of idle earth by bringing in
all the waste lands, now doing nothing--the parks, deer forests, and
so on. But that is not to the purpose. If the wastes were reclaimed
and the parks ploughed up, that would in nowise solve the problem
how to make the cultivated earth more busy. It is no use for a man
who has a garden to lean on his spade, look over his boundary wall,
and say, 'Ah, if neighbour Brown would but dig up his broad green
paths how many more potatoes he would grow!' That would not increase
the produce of the critic's garden by one single cabbage. Certainly
it is most desirable that all lands capable of yielding crops should
be reclaimed, but one great subject for the agriculturist to study
is, how to shorten the period of idleness in his already cultivated
plots. At present the earth is so very idle.
AFTER THE COUNTY FRANCHISE
The money-lender is the man I most fear to see in the villages after
the extension of the county franchise--the money-lender both in his
private and public capacity, the man who has already taken a grasp
of most little towns that have obtained incorporation in some form.
Like Shylock he demands what is in his bond: he demands his
interest, and that means a pull at every man's purse--every man,
rich or poor--who lives within the boundary. Borrowing is almost the
ruin of many such little towns; rates rise nearly as high as in
cities, and people strive all they can to live anywhere outside the
limit. Borrowing is becoming one of the curses of modern life, and a
sorrowful day it will be when the first village takes to it. The
name changes--now it is a local board, now it is commissioners,
sometimes a town council: the practice remains the same. These
authorities exist but for one purpose--to borrow money, and as any
stick will do to beat a dog with, so any pretence will do to exact
the uttermost farthing from the inhabitants. Borrowing boards they
are, one and all, and nothing else, from whom no one obtains benefit
except the solicitor, the surveyor, the lucky architect, and those
who secure a despicable living in the rear of the county court.
Nothing could better illustrate the strange supineness of the
majority of people than the way in which they pay, pay, pay, and
submit to every species of extortion at the hands of these incapable
blunderers, without so much as a protest. The system has already
penetrated into the smallest of the county towns which groan under
the incubus; let us hope, let us labour, that it may not continue
its course and enter the villages.
It may reasonably be supposed that when once the extension of the
franchise becomes an established fact, some kind of local
government will soon follow. At present country districts are
either without any local government at all--I mean practically,
not theoretically--or else they are ruled without the least shadow
of real representation. When men are admitted to vote and come to
be enlightened as to the full meaning and force of such rights, it
is probable that they will shortly demand the power to arrange
their own affairs. They will have something to say as to the
administration of the poor-law, over which at present they do not
possess the slightest control, and they are not at all unlikely to
set up a species of self-government in every separate village. I
think, in short, that the parish may become the unit in the future
to the disintegration of the artificial divisions drawn to
facilitate the poor-law. Such divisions, wherein many parishes of
the most diverse description and far apart are thrown together
anyhow as the gardener pitches weeds into his basket, have done
serious harm in the past. They have injured the sense of personal
responsibility, they have created a bureaucracy absolutely without
feeling, and they have tended to shift great questions out of
sight. The shifting of things out of sight--round the corner--is a
vile method of dealing with them. Send your wretched poor miles
away into a sort of alien workhouse, and then congratulate
yourself that you have tided over the difficulty! But the
difficulty has not been got over.
A man who can vote, and who is told--as he certainly will be
told--that he bears a part in directing the great affairs of his
nation, will ask himself why he should not be capable of managing
the little affairs of his own neighbourhood. When he has asked
himself this question, it will be the first step towards the
downfall of the inhuman poor-law. He will go further and say, 'Why
should I not settle these things at home? Why should I not walk up
to the village from my house in the country lane, and there and then
arrange the business which concerns me? Why should I any longer
permit it to be done over my head and without my consent by a body
of persons in whom I have no confidence, for they do not represent
me--they represent property?'
In his own village the voter will observe the school--his own
village then is worthy to possess its own school; possibly he may
even remotely have some trifling share in the control of the school
if there is a board. If that great interest, the children of the
parish, can be administered at home, why not the other and much less
important interests? Here may be traced a series of reflections, and
a succession of steps by which ultimately the whole system of boards
of guardians with their attendant powers, as the rural sanitary
authority and so forth, may ultimately be swept away. Government
will come again to the village.
Then arises the money-lender, and no time should be lost by those
who have the good and the genuine liberty of the countryside at
heart in labouring to prevent his entry into the village. Whatsoever
constitution the village obtains in future, let us strive to
strictly limit the borrowing powers of its council. No borrowing
powers at all would be best--government without loans would be
almost ideal--if that cannot be accomplished, then at least lay down
a stringent regulation putting a firm and impassable limit. Were
every one of my way of thinking, government without loans would be
imperative. It would be done if it had to be done. Rugged discomfort
is preferable to borrowing.
I dread, in a word, lest the follies perpetrated in towns should get
into the villages and hamlets, and want to say a word betimes of
warning. Imagine a new piece of roadway required, then to get the
money let a penny be added to the rates, and the amount produced
laid by at interest year after year, till the sum be made up. Better
wait a few years and walk half a mile round than borrow the five or
six hundred pounds, and have to pay that back and all the interest
on it. Shift somehow, do not borrow.
In the discussions upon the agricultural franchise it has been
generally assumed that the changes it portends will be shown in
momentous State affairs and questions of principle. But perhaps it
will be rather in local and home concerns that the alterations will
be most apparent. The agricultural labourer voters--and the numerous
semi-agricultural voters, not labourers--are more than likely to
look at their own parish as well as at the policy of the Foreign
Office. Gradually the parish--that is, the village--must become the
centre to men who feel at last that they are their own masters.
Under some form or other they will take the parish into their own
hands, and insist upon their business being managed at home. Some
shape of village council must come presently into existence.
Shrewd people are certain to appear upon the scene, pointing out to
the cottager that if he desires to rule himself in his own village,
he must insist upon one most important point. This is the exclusion
of property representation. Instead of property having an
overwhelming share, as now, in the direction of affairs, the owner
of the largest property must not weigh any heavier in the village
council than the wayside cottager. If farmer or landowner sit there
he must have one vote only, the same as any other member. The
council, if it is to be independent, must represent men and not
land in the shape of landowners, or money in the shape of
tenant-farmers. Shrewd people will have no difficulty in
explaining the meaning of this to the village voters, because they
can quote so many familiar instances. There is the Education Act in
part defeated by the combination of property, landowners and
farmers paying to escape a school-board--a plan temporarily
advantageous to them, but of doubtful benefit, possibly injurious,
to the parish at large. Leaving that question alone, the fact is
patent that the cottager has no share in the government of his
school, because land and money have combined. It may be governed
very well; still it is not _his_ government, and will serve to
illustrate the meaning. There is the board of guardians, nominally
elected, really selected, and almost self-appointed. The board of
guardians is land and money simply, and in no way whatever
represents the people. A favourite principle continually enunciated
at the present day is that the persons chiefly concerned should
have the management. But the lower classes who are chiefly
concerned with poor relief, as a matter of fact, have not the
slightest control over that management. Besides the guardians,
there is still an upper row, and here the rulers are not even
invested with the semblance of representation, for magistrates are
not elected, and they are guardians by virtue of their being
magistrates. The machinery is thus complete for the defeat of
representation and for the despotic control of those who, being
principally concerned, ought by all rule and analogy to have the
main share of the management. We have seen working men's
representatives sit in the House of Commons; did anyone ever see a
cottage labourer sit as administrator at the board before which the
wretched poor of his own neighbourhood appear for relief?
But it may be asked, Is the village council, then, composed of small
proprietors, to sit down and vote away the farmer's or landowner's
money without farmer or landowner having so much as a voice in the
matter? Certainly not. The idea of village self-government supposes
a distinct and separate existence, as it were; the village apart
from the farmer or landowner, and the latter apart from the village.
At present the money drawn in rates from farmer or landowner is
chiefly expended on poor-law purposes. But, as will presently
appear, village self-government proposes the entire abolition of the
poor-law system, and with it the rates which support it, or at least
the heaviest part of them. Therefore, as this money would not be
concerned, they could receive no injury, even if they did not sit at
the village council at all.
Imagine the village, figuratively speaking, surrounded by a high
wall like a girdle, as towns were in ancient times, and so cut off
altogether from the large properties surrounding it--on the one hand
the village supporting and governing itself, and on the other the
large properties equally independent.
The probable result would be a considerable reduction in local
burdens on land. A self-supporting and self-governing moral
population is the first step towards this relief to land so very
desirable in the interest of agriculture.
In practice there must remain certain more or less imperial
questions, as lines of through road, police, etc., some of which are
already managed by the county authority. As these matters affect the
farmer and landowner even more than the cottager, clearly they must
expect to contribute to the cost, and can rightly claim a share in
the management.
Having advanced so far as a village council, and arrived at the
stage of managing their own affairs, having, in fact, emerged from
pupilage, next comes a question for the council. We now govern our
village ourselves; why should we not possess our village? Why should
we not live in our own houses? Why should we not have a little share
in the land, as much, at least, as we can pay for? At this moment
the village, let us say, consists of a hundred cottages, and perhaps
there are another hundred scattered about the parish. Of these
three-fourths belong to two or three large landowners, and those who
reside in them, however protected by enactment, can never have a
sense of complete independence. We should own these cottages, so
that the inhabitants might practically pay rent to themselves. We
must purchase them, a few at a time; the residents can repurchase
from us and so become freeholders. For a purchaser there must be a
seller, and here one of the questions of the future appears: Can an
owner of this kind of property be permitted to refuse to sell? Must
he be compelled to sell?
It is clear that if the village voter thoroughly addresses himself
to his home affairs there is room for some remarkable incidents.
There is reason now, is there not, to dread the appearance of the
money-lender?
About this illustrative parish there lie many hundred acres of good
land all belonging to one man, while we, the said village council,
do not possess a rood apiece, and our constituents not a square
yard. Rightfully we ought to have a share, yet we do not agitate for
confiscation. Shall we then say that every owner of land should be
obliged to sell a certain fixed percentage--a very small percentage
would suffice--upon proffer of a reasonable amount, the proffer
being made by those who propose to personally settle on it? Of one
thousand acres suppose ten or twenty liable to forcible purchase at
a given and moderate price. After all it is not a much more
overbearing thing than the taking by railways of land in almost any
direction they please, and not nearly so tyrannous, so stupidly
tyrannous, as some of the acts of folly committed by local boards in
towns. Not long since the newspapers reported a case where a local
authority actually ran a main sewer across a gentleman's park, and
ventilated it at regular intervals, completely destroying the value
of an historic mansion, and utterly ruining a beautiful domain. This
was fouling their own nest with a vengeance. They should have
cherished that park as one of their chiefest glories, their proudest
possession. Parks and woods are daily becoming of almost priceless
value to the nation; nothing could be so mad as to destroy these
last homes of nature. Just conceive the inordinate folly of marking
such a property with sewer ventilators. This is a hundred times more
despotic than a proposal that say two per cent. of land should be
forcibly purchasable for actual settlement. Even five per cent.
would not make an appreciable difference to an estate, though every
fraction of the five per cent. were taken up.
For such proposals to have any effect, the transfer of real property
must be greatly simplified and cheapened. From time to time,
whenever a discussion occurs upon this subject, and there are signs
that the glacier-like movements of government will be hastened by
public stir, up rises some great lawyer and explains to the world
that really nothing could be simpler or cheaper than such transfer.
All that can be wished in that direction has been accomplished
already; there is not the slightest ground for agitation; every
obstruction has been removed, and the machinery is now perfect. He
quotes a long list of Acts to demonstrate the progress that has been
made, and so winds up a very effective speech. Facts, however, are
not in accordance with these gracious words. Here is an instance. A
cottage in a village was recently sold for seventy pounds; the
costs, legal expenses, parchments, all the antiquated formalities
absorbed _thirty-two pounds_, only three pounds less than half the
value of the little property. Could anything be more obviously wrong
than such a system.
The difficulties in the way of simplification are created
difficulties, entirely artificial, owing their existence to legal
ingenuity. How often has the question been asked and never answered:
Why should there be any more expense in transferring the ownership
of an acre of land than of L100 stock?
The village council coming into contact with this matter is likely
to agitate continuously for its rectification, since otherwise its
movements will be seriously hampered. If they succeed in obtaining
the abolition of these semi-feudal survivals, they will have
conferred a substantial benefit upon the community. County franchise
would be worth the granting merely to secure this.
Let us take the case for a moment of a labourer at this day and
consider his position. What has he before him? He has a
hand-to-mouth, nomad existence, ending in the inevitable frozen
misery of the workhouse. Men with votes and political power are
hardly likely to endure this for many more years, and it is much to
be hoped that they will not endure it. A labourer may be never so
hard-working, so careful, so sober, and yet let his efforts be what
they may, his old age finds him helpless. I am sure there is no
class of men among whom may be found so many industrious, plodding,
sober folk, economical to the verge of starvation. Their
straightforward lives are thrown away. Their sons and daughters,
warned by example, go to the cities, and there lose the virtues that
rendered their forefathers so admirable even in their wretchedness.
It will indeed be a blessing if, as I hope, the outcome of the
franchise is the foundation of solid inducements to the countryman
to stay in the country. I use the phrase countryman purposely,
intending it to include small farmers and small farmers' sons; the
latter are likewise driven away from the land year by year as much
as the young labourers, and are as serious a loss to it. Did the
possibility exist of purchasing a cottage and a plot of ground of
moderate size, it is more than probable that the labourer's son
would remain in the village, or return to it, and his daughter would
come back to the village to be married. We hear how the poor Italian
or the poor Swiss leaves his native country for our harder climate,
how he works and saves, and by-and-by returns to his village and
purchases some corner of earth. This seems a legitimate and worthy
object. We do not hear of our own sturdy labourers returning to
their village with a pocketful of money and purchasing a plot of
ground or a cottage. They do not attempt it, because they know that
under present conditions it is nearly impossible. There is no land
for them to buy. Why not, when the country is nothing but land?
Because the owner of ten thousand acres is by no means obliged to
part with the minutest fragment of it. If by chance a stray portion
be somewhere for sale, the expenses, the costs, the parchments, the
antiquated formalities, the semi-feudal routine delay and possibly
prevent transfer altogether. If land were accessible, and the cost
of transferring cottage property reduced to reasonable proportions,
the labourer would have the soundest of all inducements to practise
self-denial in his youth. Cities might attract him temporarily for
the advantage of higher wages, but he would put the excess by and
ultimately bring it home. Even the married cottager with a family
would try his hardest to save a little with such a hope before him.