Theodore Hook’s hero, Jack Bragg, boasted of his “little place in
Surrey.” The Guardians of the Guiltcross poor have good reason to be
proud of _their_ little place in Norfolk. When the Guiltcross Union was
formed, Mr. Thomas Rackham, master of the “house,” set aside a small
estate for the purpose of teaching the Workhouse children how to
cultivate land. This pauper’s patrimony consisted of exactly one acre
one rood and thirty-five poles of very rough “country.” A certain number
of the boys worked upon it so diligently, that it was soon found
expedient to enlarge the domain, by joining to it three acres of “hills
and holes,” which in that state were quite useless for agricultural
purposes. Two dozen spades were purchased at the outset to commence
digging the land with, and six wheel-barrows were made by a pauper, who
was a wheelwright; pickaxes and other tools were also fashioned with the
assistance of the porter, who was a blacksmith. By means of these tools,
and the labour of some fourteen sturdy boys, the whole of this barren
territory was levelled, the top sward being carefully kept uppermost. We
copy these and the other details from Mr. Rackham’s report to the
Guardians, for the information and encouragement of other Workhouse
masters, who may have the will and the power to “go and do likewise.”
It appears then, that by the autumn of 1846 one acre of the new land was
planted with wheat, and two roods twenty three poles of the home
land—the one acre one rood and thirty-five poles mentioned above—was
also planted with wheat, making in all one acre two roods and twenty
three poles under wheat for 1847. This land produced eighteen coombs
three pecks beyond a sufficient quantity reserved for seed for the wheat
crop of 1848. The remainder of the land was planted with Scotch kale,
cabbages, potatoes, &c., &c., which began coming into use in March,
1847. The entire domain is now under fruitful cultivation.
“The quantity of vegetables actually consumed by the paupers according
to the dietary tables only,” says Mr. Rackham, “is charged in the
provision accounts. Persons acquainted with domestic management and the
produce of land are aware that, where vegetables are purchased, a great
deal is paid for that which is useless for cooking purposes. In the
present case this refuse is carefully preserved and used for feeding
pigs, which were first kept in April 1848. This accounts for the large
amount of pork fatted, as compared with the small quantity of corn and
pollard used for the pigs. The leaves, &c., not eaten by the pigs,
become valuable manure. If the Guardians would consent to keep cows,
different roots and vegetables might be grown to feed them with; and
these would produce an increased quantity of manure, whilst an increased
quantity of manure would afford the means of raising a larger amount of
roots and green crops, and secure a more extended routine in cropping
the land. This would add to the profit of the land account, and give
much additional comfort to the aged people and the young children in the
workhouse.” But Mr. Rackham is ambitious of a dairy, chiefly for the
training of dairy-maids: who would become doubly acceptable as farm
servants.
Besides other advantages, the experiment presents one dear to the minds
of rate-payers—it tends to reduce the rates. The average profit per
annum on each of the acres has been fifteen pounds. Here are the
sums:—The profit of the first year was sixty pounds two shillings and
fourpence farthing; second year, fifty-one pounds seventeen shillings
and sixpence; to Christmas, 1849, three-quarters of a year, sixty-seven
pounds two shillings and one penny farthing; total, one hundred and
seventy-nine pounds one shilling and elevenpence halfpenny.
As at the Swinton and other pauper schools, a variety of industrial arts
are taught in the Guiltcross Union house, and the fact that sixty of the
boys and girls who have been trained in it are now earning their own
living, is some evidence of the success of the system pursued there.
Of one of the cultivators of this “little place in Norfolk” (not we
believe an inmate of the Union), an agreeable account was published in a
letter from Miss Martineau lately in the Morning Chronicle. It shows to
what good account a knowledge of small farming may be turned. That lady
having two acres of land, at Ambleside, in Westmoreland, which she
wished to cultivate, sent to Mr. Rackham to recommend her a farm
servant. The man arrived, and his Guiltcross experience in cultivating
small “estates” proved of essential service. He has managed to keep two
cows and a pig, besides himself and a wife, on these narrow confines;
for Miss Martineau calculates that the produce in milk, butter,
vegetables, &c., obtained from his skill and economy for herself and
household, quite pays his wages. This is her account of him:—
“He is a man of extraordinary industry and cleverness, as well as rigid
honesty. His ambition is roused; for he knows that the success of the
experiment mainly depends on himself. He is living in comfort, and
laying by a little money, and he looks so happy that it would truly
grieve me to have to give up; though I have no doubt that he would
immediately find work at good wages in the neighbourhood. His wife and
he had saved enough to pay their journey hither out of Norfolk. I gave
him twelve shillings a week all the year round. His wife earns something
by occasionally helping in the house, by assisting in my washing, and by
taking in washing when she can get it. I built them an excellent cottage
of the stone of the district, for which they pay one shilling and
sixpence per week. They know that they could not get such another off
the premises for five pounds a year.”
This is all very interesting and gratifying, but there are two sides to
every account. Supposing the system of agricultural and other industrial
training were pursued in all Unions in the country (and if it be a good
system, it ought to be so followed), then, instead of boys and girls
being turned out every three years in sixties, there would be accessions
of farmers, tailors, carpenters, dairy-maids, and domestic servants
every year to be reckoned by thousands. Supposing that every fourteen of
the agricultural section of the community had been earning fifteen
pounds a year profit per acre, we should then have a large amount of
produce brought into the market in competition with that of the
independent labourer. When, again, the multitude of boys had passed
their probation, themselves would be thrown in the labour market (as the
sixty Guiltcross boys already have been), so that their older and weaker
competitors would, in their turn, be obliged to retire to the Workhouse,
not only to their own ruin, but to the exceeding mortification of the
entire body of parochial rate-payers. The axiom, that when there is a
glut in a market any additional supply of the same commodity is an evil,
applies most emphatically to labour. In this view, the adoption of the
industrial training system for paupers and criminals would be an evil;
and an evil of the very description it is meant to cure—a pauperising
evil.
The easy and natural remedy is a combination of colonisation, with the
industrial training system. In all our colonies ordinary, merely animal
labour is eagerly coveted, and skilled labour is at a high premium.
There a competition _for_, instead of against, all sorts of labour is
keenly active. Yet great as is the demand, it is curious that no
comprehensive system for the supply of skilled labour has yet been
adopted. Except the excellent farm school of the Philanthropic Society
at Red Hill, no attempt is made to _teach_ colonisation. The majority of
even voluntary colonists are persons utterly ignorant of colonial wants.
They have never learned to dig or to delve. Many clever artists have
emigrated to Australia, where pictures are not wanted; not a few
emigrant ladies, of undoubted talents in Berlin work and crochet, have
always trembled at the approach of a cow, and never made so much as a
pat of butter in their lives. Still they succeed in the end; but only
after much misery and mortification, which would have been saved them if
they had been better prepared for colonial exigencies. The same thing
happens with the humbler classes. Boys, and even men, have been sent out
to Canada and the Southern Colonies (especially from the Irish Unions),
utterly unfitted for their new sphere of life and labour.
If, therefore, the small beginnings at Guiltcross be imitated in other
Unions (and it is much to be wished that they should be), they will be
made to grow into large results. But these results must be applied not
to clog and glut the labour market at home; but to supply the labour
market abroad.
If to every Union were attached an agricultural training school, upon a
plan that would offer legitimate inducements for the pupils to emigrate
when old enough and skilled enough to obtain their own livelihood, this
country would, we are assured, at no distant date be de-pauperised.
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