MACHINERY--VILLAGE POLITICS--ASPARAGUS.
"Last week came one to the county town
To preach our poor little army down."
--_Maud_.
Though machinery has lightened the labour of manual workers to some
extent, it entails much more trouble upon masters and foremen, for
breakages are frequent and always occur at the busiest time. What with
mowers, reapers, thrashing machines, chaff-cutters, root-pulpers, and
grain-mills run by steam-power or in connection with horse-gears;
hop-washers, separators, and other delicately adjusted novelties, the
master must of necessity be something of a mechanic himself. I doubt
if machinery is really quite the advantage claimed by theorists and
reconstructionists at the present day. Even the thrashing machine,
universally adopted, presents disadvantages in comparison with the
ancient flail, generally regarded as obsolete, though still to be
found in occasional use by the smallholder or allotment occupier. In
former times the farmer reserved his thrashing by hand, for the most
part, for winter work during severe frost or wet weather, when nothing
could be done outside. The immense barns, which still exist, were
filled almost to the roof at harvest; thatching was not necessary, and
every sheaf was absolutely safe from rain as soon as it was under
cover. Continuous winter work was provided for the men, and a daily
supply of fresh straw for chaff-cutting and bedding, besides fresh
chaff and rowens or cavings for stock throughout the winter. With the
thrashing machine in use for ricks, thatching is a necessity, and is
often difficult to arrange in the stress of harvest; the machine and
engine demand a day's work for two teams of horses to fetch them, and
the cartage and expense of much coal, now so dear. On a small farm
extra hands have to be engaged, the straw has to be stacked or carried
to the barns, and the same applies to the chaff and rowens. If the
weather is damp, straw, chaff, and rowens get stale, mouldy, and
unpalatable to the stock, a heavy charge is made for the hire of the
machine and the machine men, and the latter require food and drink or
payment instead. The machine breaks and bruises many grains of corn,
which are thereby damaged for seed or malting, whereas the less urgent
flail leaves them intact.
The sound of the thrashing machine gives an impression to outsiders of
brisk and remunerative work, but it is cheerful to the farmer only
when high prices are ruling. Far otherwise was it for many years
before the War, when corn-growers heard only its moaning, despondent
note, telling anything but a flattering tale, only varied by an
occasional angry growl, when irregular feeding choked its satiated
appetite.
From the aesthetic standpoint uncouth and noisy machines, such as
mowers and reapers, cannot be compared to a lusty team of men with
scythes, in their white shirts, backed by the flowering meadows; or a
sunny field of busy harvesters facing a golden wall of corn, and
leaving behind them the fresh-shorn stubble dotted with sheaves and
nicely balanced shocks. The rattle of the machines, too, is discordant
and out of harmony with the peaceful countryside.
It is related of Ruskin that, hearing the insistent rattle of a mowing
machine in a meadow adjoining his home by the beautiful Coniston
Water, and his sense of the fitting being outraged, he interviewed the
owner, and, by an offer to pay the trifling difference between machine
and hand labour, induced him to discontinue the annoyance.
As to the relative cost of machine and hand wheat-cutting, quite early
in my farming I obtained the opinion of a distinguished farmer, then
well known on the Council of the Royal Agricultural Society, Mr.
Charles Randell, of Chadbury, near Evesham, on the subject: "If you
can get a good crop," he said, "cut, tied, and stocked by hand at
anything like 15s. an acre, don't use a machine. If the corn is ripe
it knocks out and wastes quite a bushel of wheat per acre" (worth at
that time about 5s., now nearer 9s. or 10s.). "I always bring out my
machines, and have them oiled and made ready, _but I don't want to use
them_."
In a wet harvest the machine is unworkable on sticky clay soil, and
after a wet summer, when the corn is badly laid and twisted, it makes
very poor work, cutting off the ears and scattering them, and leaving
a quantity of uncut and untidy straw on the ground.
In my own case my equanimity was never disturbed by a reaping machine,
with its unwieldy tossing arms, on my land, for I had to find
employment for my full staff of regular hands, specially required for
the much more important hop-picking a little later, and it pleased me
that they should get the extra pay for harvest work as well.
The cream separator, I admit, is a wonderful invention, and its hum is
not unmusical; it provides fresh skim milk for the calves and pigs
morning and night, which, as well as the cream, is thoroughly cleansed
in the process. The aeration of the skim milk leaves it a most
wholesome and nourishing article of diet for the villagers if they
could be made to understand its value, and that the removal of the
cream takes away only the fat (heating material), leaving the bone and
muscle making constituents in the milk. I could never induce my
village folk to accept this rudimentary proposition; they fancied that
all the goodness was gone with the cream, and though I offered the
skim milk at the nominal price of one halfpenny a quart, very few
would send their children to fetch it, though they mostly lived within
a hundred yards of the dairy.
The hay or straw elevator is one of the greatest helps, saving much
heavy overhand labour in rick-building. An old labourer, pointing to
one, with great appreciation, on a farm I was visiting, said:
"_That's_ a machine as will be always kept in the dry and took care
on." He spoke from experience of the arduous work of unloading and the
passing of heavy weights, sometimes from the bed of the waggon to the
summit of the rick; for, as my bailiff often said, "Nobody knows so
well where the shoe pinches as the man who has to wear it."
Steam has not done all that was expected of it as an agricultural
slave. The steam plough is not a success on heavy land where the
ridges are high and irregular in width, and even the steam cultivator
has to be used with caution lest the soil should be carried from the
ridges to the furrows, and the "squitch" (couch) buried to a depth at
which it is difficult to eradicate. The great convenience of steam
cultivation is that full advantage can be taken of a short spell of
hot, dry weather for fallowing operations, and the soil is left so
hollow that it soon bakes and kills the weeds. I fully sympathize with
Tennyson's, _Northern Farmer, Old Style:_
"But summon 'ull come ater meä mayhap wi' 'is kittle o' steäm
Huzzin' an' maäzin' the blessed feälds wi' the Devil's oän teäm";
for, except on a large farm with immense fields, the ponderous and
ungainly steam, tackle gives one a sensation of intrusion. Such a
field can be found on a farm between Evesham and Alcester; it contains
300 acres. The occupier, speaking of it, mentioned that it was all
wheat that year except one corner. To a question as to the size of the
corner, it transpired that it was 50 acres, and growing peas. For
comparison there is a story of a Devonshire farmer who said he had
been very busy one winter making four fields into one. "Then you've
got a big field," said a friend. "Yes," was the reply; "it's just four
acres."
When the farm labourer was enfranchised in 1885 he became an important
member of the electorate. Candidates and canvassers alike had a much
more strenuous time than ever before, the former were constrained to
hold meetings in every village, and the latter were obliged to visit
nearly every cottage. The late Sir Richard Temple after a
distinguished career in India, became Conservative candidate for our
division. The doctrine of "three acres and a cow," in opposition to
every tenet of rural economy, as well as the division of the land
among the labourers, were at the time paraded by theorists and paid
agitators, as bribes to purchase the votes of the new electors, and as
ensuring the salvation of the rural population, which was then
beginning to suffer from unemployment, resulting from the destruction
of corn-growing by foreign competition.
The more credulous of the labourers were excited and unsettled by the
alluring prospect of independence thus held out to them, and it was
reported that some went so far as to survey the fields around their
villages and select the plots they proposed to cultivate, and that
others took baskets to the poll in which to bring home the
all-powerful magic of the mysterious vote! Among the new voters in a
neighbouring village, a man of very decided views found it puzzling to
decide by which candidate they were most nearly represented, and,
determined to make no mistake at the poll, he consulted a
fellow-labourer, inquiring: "Which way be the big uns a-going, because
I be agin they?"
The Squire of an adjoining parish met an old villager with whom he had
always been on good terms; after mutual greetings, the man
sympathised: "I _be_ sorry for you, Squire." "Why?" was the rejoinder.
"Yes, I be regular sorry for you, Squire, that I be.." "What's the
matter?" asked the Squire. "Ay! about this here land; 'tis to be
divided amongst we working men." "Indeed," said the Squire; "but look
here, after a bit, some of you won't want to cultivate it any longer,
and some, with improvident habits, will sell their plots to others, so
that soon it will be all back again into the hands of a few; what will
you do then?" The man looked puzzled, scratched his head, and
cogitated deeply, until a simple solution presented itself: "Then,
Squire," said he, "we shall divide again!"
Sir Richard Temple was undoubtedly an able man, but he was a complete
stranger to the local conditions of the constituency. The villagers of
Badsey especially, as well as of other adjoining parishes, were just
beginning to retrieve their position, threatened by the collapse of
corn-growing and consequent unemployment, by the adoption of
market-gardening and fruit-growing. The land, run down and full of
weeds and rubbish, had been cut up into allotments and offered to them
as tenants, their only choice lying between years of hard work in
redeeming its condition or emigration. Many young men chose the
latter, and did well in the States of America; but where there was a
wife and young children that course was scarcely possible, and the man
became an allotment tenant. Passing one of these on a plot full of
"squitch," which he was laboriously breaking up with a fork to expose
it in big clods to a baking sun, I asked if he had taken it. "Well,"
said he, "I don't know whether I've taken _it_ or it's taken _me_!"
These men, by unceasing labour and self-denial, were just beginning to
turn the corner; they had cleaned the land, ameliorated its mechanical
condition by application of soot and by deep digging with their
beloved forks, and, having discovered how wonderfully asparagus
nourished on this deep, rich soil, had planted large areas, as well as
plum-trees and other market-garden crops, and the well-merited return
was coming in increasingly year by year.
Sir Richard Temple did not understand the difference between the small
holder, growing corn and ordinary crops in less favoured parts of the
countrymen the one hand, and market-gardeners in the Vale of Evesham,
with its early climate, splendid soil, and railway connection with
huge artisan populations, delivering the produce with punctuality and
despatch, on the other. He considered that small holders could not
make an economic success where the farmers had failed, and had made
his views well known in the constituency, but he did not distinguish
between the small holder and the market-gardener.
The men of Badsey felt aggrieved, they knew better, and at a meeting
he held in the village they gave him a rather noisy hearing, with
interruptions such as, "Keep off them steel farks," "Mind them steel
farks, Sir Richard," and so on.
Sir Richard came to ask for my support and assistance in our village,
and, as I was not at home, my wife entertained him in my absence, with
tea and wedding-cake. She innocently asked if he had come to canvass
me; her straightforward query surprised him, but, after a moment's
hesitation, he replied cautiously: "Well, something of that sort."
He was eventually returned, and the men of Badsey continued to
flourish on asparagus-growing in spite of his warnings; new houses
sprang up in every direction, and available labour grew scarcer and
scarcer. Those splendid asparagus "sticks" or "buds," as they are
called, tied with osier or withy twigs, which may be seen in Covent
Garden Market and the large fruiterers' shops in Regent Street, are
grown in and around the parishes of Badsey and Aldington. They command
high prices, up to 15s. and 20s. a hundred for special stuff, and this
year (1919) I see that £21 was realized for the champion hundred at
the Badsey Asparagus Show. That, of course, must be regarded as quite
exceptional, and possibly there were special considerations which made
it worth the money to the purchaser.
Later came difficulties; after successive dry summers the asparagus
was attacked by a fungoid complaint, called by the growers "rust."
Instead of growing vigorously after the crop had been gathered--which
is the time when the buds for next year's crop are developing on the
crowns of the plants--and finally dying off naturally in beautiful
feathery plumes of green and gold, it presented a dingy and rusty
appearance, eventually turning black. Asparagus cannot stand
long-continued summer and autumn drought; it likes plenty of moisture,
in free circulation but not stagnant. The crops that followed the
appearance I have described were very deficient, proving that the
growing season of one year's foliage is the time when next year's crop
is decided.
The growth of asparagus is still a very important part of the
market-gardener's business in the parishes referred to, but it does
not continue to produce the best results indefinitely and continuously
on the same land, and the growers have been obliged to extend their
acreages and take fresh plots. I have little doubt that with the
scientific application of artificial fertilizers the yield would
continue satisfactory for a much longer period. Plant disease of any
kind is nearly always due to starvation for want of the chemical
constituents upon which the crop feeds, though sometimes caused by
unhealthy sap, the result of late spring frosts or unsuitable weather.
The asparagus-growers relied too much upon soot as a fertilizer; it
has a marvellous effect upon the mechanical condition of heavy land;
its particles intervene between the particles of the almost impalpable
powder of which clay is composed, and the soil approximates to a
well-tilled garden plot after a few applications and careful
incorporation, and in the local phraseology, it becomes "all of a
myrtle." But as plant food soot contains nitrogen only, a great plant
stimulant, which quickly exhausts the soil of the other necessary
constituents. If the growers would make use of basic slag,
superphosphate, or bone dust to replace the phosphate of lime removed
by the crop, and of potash in one of its available forms, they would
soon experience a great improvement in the power of their asparagus to
resist disease and deterioration.
I am aware that some of the smaller growers regard all kinds of
artificial fertilizers with suspicion, but they may be interested,
should they ever read these pages, in the following story. When
Peruvian guano was first introduced into this country, the farmers
could not be persuaded that it merited any reliance as a manure. The
importers, in despair, caused some of the despised stuff to be sown in
the form of huge letters spelling the word "FOOLS" upon a bare
hillside, visible from a great distance. The following spring, with
the beginning of growth, and throughout the summer, the word stared
the farmers in the face whenever they chanced to look that way, in
dark green outstanding characters upon the yellow background; after
this practical demonstration there was no difficulty in finding
purchasers.
Sir Richard Temple was opposed by Mr. Arthur Chamberlain, one at least
of whose canvassers was not above stretching a point to obtain the
votes of the labourers. My men told me that they had been promised
roast beef and plum pudding every day of their lives should the
Liberal party be returned. These tactics were again resorted to in the
election of 1906, when walls were placarded with pictures of the
Chinese employed in the gold-mines of the Transvaal, driven in chains
by cruel overseers, presumably representing the Conservative
Government which had sanctioned their employment. I know from what I
heard in my new home, for I was no longer at Aldington, that this
misrepresentation decided the votes of many of the more ignorant
voters.