good wages, constant wages, and a chance of increasing wages.
Labouring men more and more think simply of work and wages. They do
not want kindness--they want coin. In this they are not altogether
influenced by self-interest; they are driven rather than go of their
own movement. The world pushes hard on their heels, and they must go
on like the rest. A man cannot drift up into a corner of some green
lane, and stay in his cottage out of the tide of life, as was once
the case. The tide comes to him. He must find money somehow; the
parish will not keep him on out-relief if he has no work; the
rate-collector calls at his door; his children must go to school
decently clad with pennies in each little hand. He must have wages.
You may give him a better cottage, you may give him a large
allotment, you may treat him as an equal, and all is of no avail.
Circumstance--the push of the world--forces him to ask you for
wages. The farmer replies that he has only work for just so many and
no more. The land is full of people. Men reply in effect, 'We cannot
stay if a chance offers us to receive wages from any railway,
factory, or enterprise; if wages are offered to us in the United
States, there we must go.' If they heard that in a town fifty miles
distant twenty shillings could be had for labour, how many of the
hale men do you suppose would stay in the village? Off they would
rush to receive the twenty shillings per week, and the farmers might
have the land to themselves if they liked. Eighteen shillings to a
pound a week would draw off every man from agriculture, and leave
every village empty. If a vast industrial combination announced
regular wages of that amount for all who came, there would not be a
man left in the fields out of the two millions or more who now till
them.
A plan to get more wages out of the land would indeed be a wonderful
success. As previously explained, it is not so much the amount paid
to one individual as the paying of many individuals that is so much
to be desired. Depression in agriculture has not materially
diminished the sum given to a particular labourer, but it has most
materially diminished the sum distributed among the numbers. One of
the remarkable features of agricultural difficulties is, indeed,
that the quotation of wages is nominally the same as in the past
years of plenty. But then not nearly so many receive them. The
father of the family gets his weekly money the same now as ten years
since. At that date his sons found work at home. At the present date
they have to move on. Some farmer is likely to exclaim, 'How can
this be, when I cannot get enough men when I want them?' Exactly so,
but the question is not when you want _them_, but when they want
you. You cannot employ them, as of old, all the year round,
therefore they migrate, or move to and fro, and at harvest time may
be the other side of the county.
The general aspect of country life was changing fast enough before
the depression came. Since then it has continued to alter at an
increasing rate--a rate accelerated by education; for I think
education increases the struggle for more wages. As a man grows in
social stature so he feels the want of little things which it is
impossible to enumerate, but which in the aggregate represent a
considerable sum. Knowledge adds to a man's social stature, and he
immediately becomes desirous of innumerable trifles which, in
ancient days, would have been deemed luxuries, but which now seem
very commonplace. He wants somewhat more fashionable clothes, and I
use the word fashion in association with the ploughman purposely,
for he and his children do follow the fashion now in as far as they
can, once a week at least. He wants a newspaper--only a penny a
week, but a penny is a penny. He thinks of an excursion like the
artisan in towns. He wants his boots to shine as workmen's boots
shine in towns, and must buy blacking. Very likely you laugh at the
fancy of shoe-blacking having anything to do with the farm labourer
and agriculture. But I can assure you it means a good deal. He is no
longer satisfied with the grease his forefathers applied to their
boots; he wants them to shine and reflect. For that he must, too,
have lighter boots, not the heavy, old, clod-hopping watertights
made in the village. If he retains these for week-days, he likes a
shiny pair for Sundays. Here is the cost, then, of an additional
pair of shoes; this is one of the many trifles the want of which
accompanies civilization. Once now and then he writes a letter, and
must have pen, ink, and paper; only a pennyworth, but then a penny
is a coin when the income is twelve or fourteen shillings a week.
He likes a change of hats--a felt at least for Sunday. He is not
happy till he has a watch. Many more such little wants will occur to
anyone who will think about them, and they are the necessary
attendants upon an increase of social stature. To obtain them the
young man must have money--coins, shillings, and pence. His
thoughts, therefore, are bent on wages; he must get wages somewhere,
not merely to live, for bread, but for these social necessaries.
That he can live at home with his family, that in time he may get a
cottage of his own, that cottages are better now, large gardens
given, that the labourer is more independent--all these and twenty
other considerations--all these are nothing to him, because they are
not to be depended on. Wages paid weekly are his aim, and thus it is
that education increases the value of a weekly stipend, and
increases the struggle for it by sending so many more into the ranks
of competitors. I cannot see myself why, in the course of a little
time, we may not see the sons of ploughmen competing for clerkships,
situations in offices of various kinds, the numerous employments not
of a manual character. So good is the education they receive, that,
if only their personal manners happen to be pleasant, they have as
fair a chance of getting such work as others.
Ceaseless effort to obtain wages causes a drifting about of the
agricultural population. The hamlets and villages, though they seem
so thinly inhabited, are really full, and every extra man and youth,
finding himself unable to get the weekly stipend at home, travels
away. Some go but a little distance, some across the width of the
country, a few emigrate, though not so many as would be expected.
Some float up and down continually, coming home to their native
parish for a few weeks, and then leaving it again. A restlessness
permeates the ranks; few but those with families will hire for the
year. They would rather do anything than that. Family men must do so
because they require cottages, and four out of six cottages belong
to the landowners and are part and parcel of the farms. The activity
in cottage building, to which reference has been made, as prevailing
ten or twelve years since, was solely on the part of the landowners.
There were no independent builders; I mean the cottages were not
built by the labouring class. They are let by farmers to those
labourers who engage for the year, and if they quit this employment
they quit their houses. Hence it is that even the labourers who have
families are not settled men in the full sense, but are liable to be
ordered on if they do not give satisfaction, or if cause of quarrel
arises. The only settled men--the only fixed population in villages
and hamlets at the present day--are that small proportion who
possess cottages of their own. This proportion varies, of course,
but it is always small. Of old times, when it was the custom for men
to stay all their lives in one district, and to work for one farmer
quite as much for payment in kind as for the actual wages, this made
little difference. Very few men once settled in regular employment
moved again; they and their families remained for many years as
stationary as if the cottage was their property, and frequently
their sons succeeded to the place and work. Now in these days the
custom of long service has rapidly disappeared. There are many
reasons, the most potent, perhaps, the altered tone of the entire
country. It boots little to inquire into the causes. The fact is,
then, that no men, not even with families, will endure what once
they did. If the conditions are arbitrary, or they consider they are
not well used, or they hear of better terms elsewhere, they will
risk it and go. So, too, farmers are more given to changing their
men than was once the case, and no longer retain the hereditary
faces about them. The result is that the fixed population may be
said to decline every year. The total population is probably the
same, but half of it is nomad. It is nomad for two reasons--because
it has no home, and because it must find wages.
Farmers can only pay so much in wages and no more; they are at the
present moment really giving higher wages than previously, though
nominally the same in amount. The wages are higher judged in
relation to the price of wheat; that is, to their profits. If coal
falls in price, the wages of coal-miners are reduced. Now, wheat has
fallen heavily in price, but the wages of the labourer remain the
same, so that he is, individually, when he has employment, receiving
a larger sum. Probably, if farming accounts were strictly balanced,
and farming like any other business, that sum would be found to be
more than the business would bear. No trace of oppression in wages
can be found. The farmer gets allowances from his landlord, and he
allows something to his labourers, and so the whole system is kept
up by mutual understanding. Except under a very important rise in
wheat, or a favourable change in the condition of agriculture
altogether, it is not possible for the farmers to add another
sixpence either to the sum paid to the individual or to the sum paid
in the aggregate to the village.
Therefore, as education increases--and it increases rapidly--as the
push of the world reaches the hamlet; as the labouring class
increase in social stature, and twenty new wants are found; as they
come to look forth upon matters in a very different manner to their
stolid forefathers; it is evident that some important problems will
arise in the country. The question will have to be asked: Is it
better for this population to be practically nomad or settled? How
is livelihood--_i.e._, wages--to be found for it? Can anything be
substituted for wages? Or must we devise a gigantic system of
emigration, and in a twelvemonth (if the people took it up) have
every farmer crying out that he was ruined, he could never get his
harvest in. I do not think myself that the people could be induced
to go under any temptation. They like England in despite of their
troubles. If the farmer could by any happy means find out some new
plant to cultivate, and so obtain a better profit and be able to
give wages to more hands, the nomad population would settle itself
somehow, if in mud huts. No chance of that is in sight at present,
so we are forced round to the consideration of a substitute for
wages.
Now, ten or twelve years since, when much activity prevailed in all
things agricultural, it was proposed to fix the labouring population
to the soil by building better cottages, giving them large gardens
and allotments, and various other privileges. This was done; and in
'Fraser' I did not forget to credit the good intent of those who did
it. Yet now we see, ten years afterwards, that instead of fixing the
population, the population becomes more wandering. Why is this? Why
have not these cottages and allotments produced their expected
effect? There seems but one answer--that it is the lack of fixity of
tenure. All these cottages and allotments have only been held on
sufferance, on good behaviour, and hence they have failed. For even
for material profit in the independent nineteenth century men do not
care to be held on their good behaviour. A contract must be free and
equal on both sides to be respected. To illustrate the case, suppose
that some large banking institution in London gave out as a law that
all the employes must live in villas belonging to the bank, say at
Norwood. There they could have very good villas, and gardens
attached, and on payment even paddocks, and there they could dwell
so long as they remained in the office. But the instant any cause of
disagreement arose they must quit not only the office but their
homes. What an outcry would be raised against bank managers'
tyranny were such a custom to be introduced! The extreme hardship of
having to leave the house on which so much trouble had been
expended, the garden carefully kept up and planted, the paddock; to
leave the neighbourhood where friends had been found, and which
suited the constitution, and where the family were healthy. Fancy
the stir there would be, and the public meetings to denounce the
harsh interference with liberty! Yet, with the exception that the
clerk might have L300 a year, and the labourer 12s. or 14s. a week,
the cases would be exactly parallel. The labourer has no fixity of
tenure. He does not particularly care to lay himself out to do his
best in the field or for his master, because he is aware that
service is no inheritance, and at any moment circumstances may arise
which may lead to his eviction. For it is really eviction, though
unaccompanied by the suffering associated with the word--I was going
to write 'abroad' for in Ireland. So that all the sanitary cottages
erected at such expense, and all the large gardens and the
allotments offered, have failed to produce a contented and settled
working population. Most people are familiar by this time with the
demand of the tenant farmers for some exalted kind of compensation,
which in effect is equivalent to tenant-right, _i.e._, to fixity of
tenure. Without this, we have all been pretty well informed by now,
it is impossible for farmers to flourish, since they cannot expend
capital unless they feel certain of getting it back again. This is
precisely the case with the labourer. His labour is his capital,
and he cannot expend it in one district unless he is assured of his
cottage and garden--that is, of his homestead and farm. You cannot
have a fixed population unless it has a home, and the labouring
population is practically homeless. There appears no possibility of
any real amelioration of their condition until they possess settled
places of abode. Till then they must move to and fro, and increase
in restlessness and discontent. Till then they must live in debt,
from hand to mouth, and without hope of growth in material comfort.
A race for ever trembling on the verge of the workhouse cannot
progress and lay up for itself any saving against old age. Such a
race is feeble and lacks cohesion, and does not afford that backbone
an agricultural population should afford to the country at large. At
the last, it is to the countryman, to the ploughman, and 'the
farmer's boy,' that a land in difficulty looks for help. They are
the last line of defence--the reserve, the rampart of the nation.
Our last line at present is all unsettled and broken up, and has
lost its firm and solid front. Without homes, how can its ranks ever
become firm and solid again?
An agricultural labourer entering on a cottage and garden with his
family, we will suppose, is informed that so long as he pays his
rent he will not be disturbed. He then sets to work in his off hours
to cultivate his garden and his allotment; he plants fruit-trees; he
trains a creeper over his porch. His boys and girls have a home
whenever out of service, and when they are at home they can assist
in cultivating their father's little property. The family has a home
and a centre, and there it will remain for generations. Such is
certainly the case wherever a labourer has a cottage of his own. The
family inherit it for generations; it would not be difficult to find
cases in which occupation has endured for a hundred years. There is
no danger now of the younger members of the family staying too much
at home. The pressure of circumstances is too strong, as already
explained; all the tendencies of the time are such as would force
them from home in search of wages. There is no going back, they must
push forwards.
The cottage-tenure, like the farm-tenure, must come from the
landlord, of course. All movements must fall on the landlord unless
they are made imperial questions. It is always the landowner who has
to bear the burden in the end. As the cottages belong to the
landowners, fixity or certainty of tenure is like taking their
rights from them. But not more so than in the case of the exalted
compensation called tenant-right. Indeed, I think I shall show that
the change would be quite trifling beside measures which deal with
whole properties at once, of five, ten, or twenty thousand acres, as
the case may be. For, in the first place, let note be taken of a
most important circumstance, which is that at the present time these
cottages let on sufferance do not bring in one shilling to the
landlord. They are not the least profit to him. He does not receive
the nominal rent, and if he did, of what value would be so
insignificant a sum, the whole of which for a year would not pay a
tenth part of the losses sustained by the failure of one tenant
farmer. As a fact, then, the cottages are of no money value to the
landowner. A change, therefore, in the mode of tenure could not
affect the owner like a change in the tenure of a great farm, say at
a rental of L1,500. Not having received any profit from the previous
tenure of cottages, he suffers no loss if the tenure be varied. The
advantage the landowner is supposed to enjoy from the possession of
cottages scattered about his farms is that the tenants thereby
secure men to do their work. This advantage would be much better
secured by a resident and settled population. Take away the
conventional veil with which the truth is usually flimsily hidden,
and the fact is that the only objection to a certain degree of
fixity in cottage tenure is that it would remove from the farmer the
arbitrary power he now possesses of eviction. What loss there would
be in this way it is not easy to see, since, as explained, the men
must have wages, and can only get them from farmers, to whom
therefore they must resort. But then the man knows the power to give
such notice is there, and it does not agree with the feelings of the
nineteenth century. No loss whatever would accrue either to
landowner or tenant from a fixed population. A farmer may say, 'But
suppose the man who has my cottage will not work for me?' To this I
reply, that if the district is so short of cottages that it is
possible for a farmer to be short of hands, the sooner pressure is
applied in some way, and others built, the better for landowner,
tenant, and labourer. If there is sufficient habitation for the
number of men necessary for cultivating the land, there will be no
difficulty, because one particular labourer will not work for one
particular farmer. That labourer must then do one of two things, he
must starve or work for some other farmer, where his services would
dispossess another labourer, who would immediately take the vacant
place. The system of employing men on sufferance, and keeping them,
however mildly, under the thumb, is a system totally at variance
with the tenets of our time. It is a most expensive system, and
ruinous to true self-respect, insomuch as it tends to teach the
labourer's children that the only way they can show the independence
of their thought is by impertinent language. How much better for a
labourer to be perfectly free--how much better for an employer to
have a man to work for him quite outside any suspicion of
sufferance, or of being under his thumb! I should not like men under
my thumb; I should like to pay them for their work, and there let
the contract end, as it ends in all other businesses. As more wages
cannot be paid, the next best thing, perhaps the absolutely
necessary thing, is a fixed home.
I think it would pay any landowner to let all the cottages upon his
property to the labourers themselves direct, exactly as farms are
let, giving them security of tenure, so long as rent was
forthcoming, with each cottage to add a large garden, or allotment,
up to, say, two acres, at an agricultural, and not an accommodation,
rent. Most gardens and allotments are let as a favour at a rent
about three times, and in some cases even six times, the
agricultural rent of the same soil in the adjoining fields.
Cottagers do not look upon such tenancies--held, too, on
sufferance--as a favour or kindness, and feel no gratitude nor any
attachment to those who permit them to dig and delve at thrice the
charge the farmer pays. Add to these cottages gardens, not
necessarily adjoining them, but as near as circumstances allow, up
to two acres at a purely agricultural rental. If, in addition,
facilities were to be given for the gradual purchase of the freehold
by the labourer on the same terms as are now frequently held out by
building societies, it would be still better. I think it would turn
out for the advantage of landowner, tenant, and the country at large
to have a settled agricultural population.
The limit of two acres I mention, not that there is any especial
virtue in that extent of land, but because I do not think the
labourer would profit by having more, since he must then spend his
whole time cultivating his plot. Experience has proved over and over
again that for a man in England to live by spade-husbandry on four
or five acres of land is the most miserable existence possible. He
can but just scrape a living, he is always failing, his children are
in rags, and debt ultimately consumes him. He is of no good either
to himself or to others or to the country. For in our country
agriculture, whether by plough or spade, is confined to three
things, to grass, corn, or cattle, and there is no plant like the
vine by which a small proprietor may prosper. Wet seasons come, and
see--even the broad acres cultivated at such an expense of money
produce nothing, and the farmer comes to the verge of ruin. But this
verge of ruin to the small proprietor who sees his four acres of
crops destroyed means simple extinction. So that the amount of land
to be of advantage is that amount which the cottager can cultivate
without giving his entire time to it; so that, in fact, he may also
earn wages.
To landowner and farmer the value of a fixed population like this,
fixed and independent, and looking only for payment for what was
actually done, and not for eleemosynary earnings, would be, I think,
very great. There would be a constant supply of first-class labour
available all the year round. A supply of labour on an estate is
like water-power in America--indispensable. But if you have no
resident supply you face two evils--you must pay extra to keep men
there when you have no real work for them to do, or you must offer
fancy wages in harvest. Now, I think a resident population would do
the same work if not at less wages at the time of the work, yet for
less money, taking the year through.
I should be in hopes that such a plan would soon breed a race of men
of the sturdiest order, the true and natural countrymen; men
standing upright in the face of all, without one particle of
servility; paying their rates, and paying their rents; absolutely
civil and pleasant-mannered, because, being really independent, they
would need no impudence of tongue to assert what they did not feel;
men giving a full day's work for a full day's wages (which is now
seldom seen); men demanding to be paid in full for full work, but
refusing favours and petty assistance to be recouped hereafter; able
to give their children a fixed home to come back to; able even to
push them in life if they wish to leave employment on the land; men
with the franchise, voting under the protection of the ballot, and
voting first and foremost for the demolition of the infernal
poor-law and workhouse system.