Holdings—either freehold or with a secure tenancy under a public
body—give perhaps the best chance of breeding a spirit of independence
in the people. Co-operation trains them in adaptability and resource.
At one time—seeing the waste of energy resulting from the twenty or so
small farmers in our valley each making their separate few pats of
butter weekly (and bad butter at that!) I got a dozen or more of them
together and put the case for co-operative milk-selling before them.
They all agreed that it was the right thing to do, that milk-selling
paid much better than butter-making and that the cost of transit to town
(by motor-car or country cart) could be recouped with profit. We went
into the figures and were satisfied. But when it came to actual
operations the paralysis of lack of initiative was on them, and no one
would stir a finger! If _I_ had arranged a whole scheme and set it in
operation I have no doubt they would have fallen in with it. But, as I
said, I had my own work to do, and had no intention of giving up a large
part of the day to their affairs. The only one who volunteered to do
anything practically—and this illustrates the difference between the
agricultural and the other workers—was curiously enough a _navvy_. He
had only a very small farm which he carried on side by side with his
navvy work, but he immediately took practical steps and would I believe
have carried a scheme through but for an illness which just then
overtook him.
A supply of Small Holdings (holdings say up to thirty acres in size[33])
on a really secure basis would do an immense work in liberating the
social life of the rural workers. For the first time in his history one
of the most important types of man in the country would be able to hold
up his head, face his ‘superiors,’ and give some kind of utterance and
expression to his own ideals. At present agricultural life is hugely
dull from its mere uniformity and want of variety under the
all-pervading foot-rule of the landowner and his faithful servant the
parson. A greater supply of small holdings would also, I need hardly
say, be valuable from the economic point of view, and the greater
variety it would encourage in the culture of the soil.
Of course what we now especially want, and what happily people are
beginning to _feel_ the want of, is the establishment of large
co-operative farms over the face of the land—somewhat on the model of
the Danish farms. When it is remembered what the Danes have done, with
an originally quite poor soil, by their organized co-operative
methods—how they have renewed the prosperity of their own country and
created a new invasion of Britain by their agricultural products—it
seems astonishing that we over here still remain in the muddy ruts of
our old ways. Supposing for example that by co-operative or governmental
purchase, or even (if it can be imagined) by gift from a large
landowner, an extensive farm of some two thousand acres were acquired;
supposing that suitable portions of the farm were broken up into twenty
small holdings of ten or twenty acres each; and that the remaining body
of the land were farmed in thorough style under a skilled manager—the
workers on the central farm being the small holders themselves, who
would thus work partly for themselves on an individualistic basis and
partly collectively for wages; supposing that the manager was given by
the co-operators a certain amount of authority for the purposes of work
and organization, and that on the other hand he was there to _advise_
the small holders to a certain extent as to their work and crops;
supposing that he organized co-operative arrangements for the members of
the society, both for the purchase of necessary materials and the sale
of their products; suppose that a joint council arranged the matters of
wages and dividends, and the establishment of creameries, cheese and
butter-making apparatus, egg-collecting systems, and so forth; surely it
is not very difficult to see that in some such roughly indicated way a
great new departure might be made in the agricultural development of the
United Kingdom. If a thousandth, if a twenty thousandth part of what is
spent in the mad destruction of a great war were spent on some such
constructive work, ten times the number of people now employed in
agriculture might be placed productively on the land, and the output of
wealth and home-grown food (so important to our island) might be
enormously increased.
About nine years ago—in 1906—I began to pull the farm lads and men
together to form a little Club at Millthorpe. For some years we had a
difficulty in finding a place for it, and had to be content with a very
small room in a cottage. But here came in the advantage of the small
holder. A silversmith who lives in the locality—the only man beside
myself who has two or three acres of freehold and who is not tied to a
landlord—having joined the Club, and seeing our difficulty, offered a
fine and large barn belonging to him for our use. If it had not been for
him we should have had to go, cap in hand, to some local owner or cleric
and could never have developed freely. As it is, the place has been a
great success. Managed in an easy-going sort of way by the men
themselves (and I am happy to say that my share now of the management is
very small) the Club has taken its own lines quite naturally. In order
to avoid ill-feeling and competition with the public-house—which is
close at hand—we have no drink, except tea and coffee. Whist, lectures,
readings, whist drives, dances, socials, billiards, are the chief
amusements, and the place serves occasionally for discussion of local
affairs. Theatricals, in a small way, now and then. And the balance of
our weekly subscriptions goes in winter to a Christmas supper, and in
summer to an excursion by rail or brake.
With small people secure in their tenure, such Clubs would grow up
pretty abundantly and would become the start-points of co-operative
movements, creameries, agricultural Banks, and so forth. The great thing
is that they should _not_ be managed by benevolent superiors, for the
management of their own concerns is after all the chief and most
important item of a people’s education. There is however a place in our
countrysides—and a need—for people of a rather wider knowledge and
outlook than the general rustics to come and live among them simply as
friends (and not as benefactors). People of this kind can certainly
contribute _something_—even though their ‘wider knowledge’ be as a rule
rather vague and bookish. They have information about what is going on
elsewhere, and they often are good at organizing. A new _kind_ of
parson, democratic-minded and really in touch with the people, and not
attached to any ‘church,’ and a man with a _little_ leisure at his
command, might be greatly helpful. Why do not the thousands of young men
(or women) who are thus qualified rush in to fill this void?
At one time, as I think I have already mentioned, I was a member of the
Parish Council, but the hopelessness of getting any result therefrom,
combined with the waste of time connected with it, caused me after a few
years to abandon the position. The four or five farmers, all in terror
of their landlords, and the parson (bound by golden chains to the Lord
of the Manor) formed a solid phalanx against any progressive proposal.
Perhaps I ought to have fought things out a little more, but wrangling
is an occupation which I detest, and to fight questions to a practical
finish always means the expenditure of much time—time which I with my
agricultural, literary and other labours could ill afford. The one
prevailing idea with the Council was not to spend _any_ money if
possible; and even the few shillings necessary for the repair of a small
length of public footpath would be debated over with a tenacity and
miserliness of outlook which made one despair; while the Vicar (not
without laudable presence of mind) would resign himself to slumber in
the Chair!
About the only thing of use I was able to do was to save from loss or
destruction the Award Book—that is the book which records the enclosure,
early last century, of the Common Lands of Holmesfield Parish, and
specifies the details of their assignment to the various proprietors
then holding land in the parish. And this I only did with difficulty and
after the labours of many months. When the Award was completed (in 1820)
the said Award Book naturally and rightly was handed over, not to the
Church or the Squire, but to one of the Trustees who represented the
Parish generally—a farmer, who of course kept the book at his farm under
lock and key, but with permission to the parishioners to inspect it at
convenient seasons. In course of time the farmer died, and his son
following in the same farm, became custodian of the book. Later on and
after many years, the son died, and the son’s widow became custodian. By
that time most people in the parish had forgotten, or were utterly
ignorant of the existence of such a book. It might easily have happened
that the widow or _her_ son, migrating to another part of the country,
should have taken the book with them among their household goods—in
which case it might have been lost for ever to our Parish. Such or
something similar _has_ happened frequently of course. It happened to
the Minute Book of the Courts Baron of Holmesfield—a manuscript record
of the meetings of the said Court all the way from 1588 to 1800, and a
most valuable and interesting document. In some unknown way the book
disappeared; but by a piece of good luck, it has now come into the
possession of the Free Library at Sheffield, where it can easily be
inspected, and where it is safer perhaps than it would have been in the
village to which it refers.
To return to our Award Book, the Parish Councils Acts very wisely gave
all such documents into the custody of the Parish Council to be kept in
a Parish room or Chest. But the difficulty was to make our Council take
any active interest in the fate of the book. Moreover it possessed no
Parish Room or Parish chest, and when the question came before it of
having a chest made, even that appeared to some of the members a serious
and unnecessary expense. Questions of the dimensions of the chest, the
material of which it should be constructed, the number of locks it
should carry, the selection of the joiner who should be entrusted with
the precious work and so forth, were endlessly debated; the Council
meetings took place only at long intervals and it seemed at last as if
the chest never _would_ get made. I mention these details merely to show
the kind of thing that happens in country villages. Meanwhile the Vicar
went to the said widow and (not without remonstrance from her) succeeded
in obtaining the Award Book; and placed it in the _Vestry_. A faction
then arose in the Council who maintained that the book was quite secure
in the Vestry safe; and that no Parish Chest was needed! It had then to
be pointed out that the Act did not _allow_ such books to be kept in the
Vestry, and that the Council would be responsible if it did not keep the
thing in its own custody. And so the game went on. Ultimately after a
full year of similar imbecility, the chest really got itself made; the
Award Book and some other documents were placed within, and now repose
there in waiting for the Day of Judgment. Exhausted by the labours
connected with the affair, and hopeless of ever getting any useful
activity out of the P.C., I shortly afterwards retired from it.
Of course these conditions are not the same in all parishes. Where there
are mining or artisan populations there is often a good deal of
briskness and movement; but in the agricultural regions and the South of
England affairs are somewhat as I have described. The District Councils
are a shade better than the Parish Councils; but the membership of them
falls largely into the hands of small shopkeepers and a middling class
of folk who are very philistine and wanting in æsthetic perception, and
as a rule rather ignorant except in matters of business. They make hard
and fast rules and regulations—often suggested by the conditions
existing in the jerry-built slum-areas of the smaller towns—and by
enforcing these regulations in country districts where they are not
needed do seriously hamper the expansion of rural life. Such are some of
the regulations about the height and cubic space of rooms, which
desirable though they be in slum-tenements are quite out of place and
the cause of needlessly high rents in country cottages; such also the
barring of wooden dwellings, on account of fire, in many rural and even
isolated regions where there is no public danger from this cause; and
again the vexatious restrictions set upon the use of vans and tents. In
these respects the work of the District Councils is really helping
towards the increase of an existing evil, the depopulation of the
countrysides.
On the other hand the composition of these Councils makes them absurdly
deferent to big commercial and aristocratic interests, and the money of
the ratepayers gets poured out like water on schemes in which under
cover of public works private interests are largely concerned. As I have
had occasion to explain in the Fabian Tract above-mentioned—_The Village
and the Landlord_—our local District Council, having decided that a
reservoir was needed, applied to the then Duke of Rutland for the
purchase of a suitable area on the moors above us. The land in question
had before 1820 been part of the Common Lands of the parish, and was
now, as the ducal private property, paying rates on an _estimated
rental_ of less than 2s. 6d. per acre. It could not therefore be
supposed to be worth much more than £3 per acre, capital value; and it
might _almost_ have been expected that in consideration of the history
of the Enclosure transactions, and of the additional fact that the land
was wanted for an important public purpose (water supply), the area
necessary for the reservoir would have been granted free. Far from that
happening, as a matter of fact the amount actually charged was at a rate
of about £150 per acre! The sad thing about such a levy on the public
purse is not only that the ducal people should have charged it, but that
the District Council should have paid it! If the latter had had the
gumption to offer a bold resistance, to decide for themselves what was a
reasonable payment, and to bring the whole matter before the public, the
case for the former would probably have collapsed. But there’s the
rub—the want of spirit and pluck in these public bodies; and considering
these and similar things one seems to see very plainly that what really
matters in the life of a nation is not so much the exact form of its
institutions as the general level of education, alertness, and public
spirit among its people. With these latter advantages defective
institutions may still be made to serve; without them the best will soon
become corrupt. It may however be said that some institutions are
naturally more favorable than others to the growth of public spirit, and
that is a consideration worth remembering.
One of the few native institutions of long standing in this locality is
the Well-dressing—which takes place in some of the neighboring villages
once a year, during the feast-week of the village, and is accompanied
with dancing and other festivities. The village fountain or spring is
decorated with flowers—sometimes in quite elaborate and ornamental
designs—and the festival evidently dates from very early or
pre-Christian times when the divinities of the streams and water-sources
were recognized and worshipped. When I first came, in 1883, into these
parts, there were along all the lane sides numbers of the most charming
stone cisterns and water-troughs bubbling with clean water and overhung
with maiden-hair ferns; and it was part of the habits of the
country-folk to keep these places in order—a joy to human beings and to
animals. Now we have a reservoir as above-mentioned. The Well-dressings
truly remain as a yearly function; but the divinities whom they used to
celebrate have fled. The cisterns and troughs all over the country are
neglected. They are cracked and dried up and full of potsherds and
salmon-tins; wayfaring men and animals go thirsty; and the public spirit
and service of the water-gods has vanished. We are told that water
conducted through miles of iron tubes and lengths of lead piping is much
more ‘sanitary’ than the water from field springs and wells. It may be.
But I prefer the latter. At one time there were so many cases of
lead-poisoning in the Sheffield district, traceable to lead connections,
that the matter excited serious attention. It was decided that the
trouble was due to a certain acid in the moor water, which dissolved the
lead, and consequently large filter-beds charged with chalk and lime
were made in connection with the reservoirs, which neutralized the acid.
The water was freed from this danger, but it became saturated with lime;
and the people died from stone in the bladder instead of lead-poisoning!
Personally I would prefer to take my risk of a microbe in a flowing
cistern. And with an alert country-population, assisted by an occasional
inspector, such a risk would certainly be small.
But we are told that public spirit ought to make us join these reservoir
schemes; and pressure is put on us by the ‘authorities’ to do so. I do
not by any means agree. Though no doubt there are cases in which local
storage is advisable or necessary, the unbridled transfer of water over
immense distances is attended by serious evils. The beautiful Thirlmere
is turned into a mere water-tank in order to supply Manchester; the
lovely dales of Derbyshire are disfigured beyond recognition so that
they may quench the thirst of Birmingham. In other words, in order to
encourage the growth of a hideous and dirty city with an unclean and
poverty-stricken population a tract of clean and gracious land a hundred
miles off is cleared of _its_ population and also rendered hideous! And
all this at a huge and incalculable expense. We do not want these great
congested and unhealthy centres, and we do want our streams and springs
and the gods who dwell among them. Let the people come out for the water
if they want it; but let them come with forethought and reverence.
Another native institution managed, like the well-dressing, by the
people themselves is the Ploughing Match. There _is_ a Farmers’
Association which of course ought to be a kind of Trade-union for the
promotion and protection of farming interests. Perhaps once it was
alive; but now and ever since I have known anything about the matter it
has become hopelessly futile and decadent. It has a dinner at some
public-house once a year and gets thoroughly drunk—and that is about all
it does! But the Ploughing-Match Association, which was originally I
suppose an offshoot of the Farmers’ Association, _is_ alive—possibly
because it has nothing whatever to do with politics. The farmers and
their sons and the small holders (such as there are) join in and
organize the affair; and it is a pretty sight to see in two adjacent
fields perhaps twenty teams of men or boys with their shining ploughs
and their beribboned horses going to and fro each on their appointed
strip of land; the turning of the animals at the extremities; the clicks
and calls; the marvellous accuracy of the furrows; the groups of critics
and the judges. Going among them all one perceives what splendid
material there is here among the English countrysides; and also one
grieves to think how it is paralysed from development and expansion by
our absurd land-system and generally apathetic way of conducting
ourselves towards the most important of all industries. We have at
Holmesfield the champion ploughman of the neighborhood, who takes the
prizes at the village matches for many miles round. He is a great friend
of mine. And I am also proud to say that at our Association Committee
meetings my professional opinion is sometimes consulted, and I may
occasionally be seen amid the fumes of smoke and beer occupying the
Chair and keeping a dozen or twenty farmers in order, or bringing them
back to the practical point of discussion when (as they generally do)
they wander afar from it—a sufficiently humorous situation for a
so-called “poet and prophet”!
But the most important village institution after all—and more important
perhaps than the Church—is the Public-house. Here is the natural centre
of the Village life, and here the village Opinion—if there is any—is
collected and consolidated. It is a great pleasure to me to sit
occasionally in our “Royal Oak” among the rustics whom I know so well.
Their quaint humour, their shrewd judgments, their shy silences, their
naughty stories, are a continual recreation. Unfortunately, like so much
else in rural life, the Pub. has in general been allowed to go to decay;
and instead of being the village meeting-place and centre of sociability
it has too often become a mere resort of drink and imbecility. “Tied” to
a Brewery, and at an exorbitant rent, the Publican has no alternative
but to sell as much as he can of the vile decoction supplied to him. He
encourages booze but does not encourage sociable converse. The Brewer
rises to wealth and obtains a seat in the House of Lords; the villager
sinks slowly but surely poisoned in body and atrophied in mind, and dies
in a ditch.
One of the very first things to be done for the restoration of the rural
life is the reorganization of the Public-house—or rather its liberation.
The clutch of the Brewers upon the drink trade should be cut off
decisively and finally. The manufacture of beer ought either to be a
State monopoly or it ought to be absolutely free, without licence, and
subject only to a severe inspection. There has been a great deal of talk
lately about the intemperance of the workers, and the abolition or
serious restriction of the drink traffic; but the real root of the evil
(certainly as regards beer) is the badness and poisonous character of
the liquor supplied. See to it that that is clean and wholesome—that the
lager-beers, small beers, teas and temperance drinks are not
sophisticated with harmful chemicals—and for the rest leave the houses
free. Leave the publican to use his good sense and authority, and make
him responsible for not keeping order. If that policy is carried out
there will not be much to complain of. The sale of actual _spirits_ in
drinking shops is another question, and that might well be restricted or
abolished.
The village pub. ought to be a place where pleasant and decent
refreshment of various kinds is provided—especially of drink which is a
first necessity for tired workers. It ought to be clean and fairly
comfortable and provided with games, papers, and similar means of
recreation. On the other hand it should have no suspicion of genteel or
missionary purpose about it. If the manual worker cannot talk freely and
feel himself at home in the place he decidedly will not come to it; and
it is certainly better that he should be a bit rough and rowdy than that
he should feel that he is being ‘improved.’ What the rural worker wants
above all—and what it is very necessary that he should have—is a place
where he can be at ease, converse freely, exchange ideas, and _develop
out of his own roots_. The town worker has now, in his trade unions, his
various clubs and societies, got something of the kind. The rural worker
is a poor lost thing; he has no centre of growth. The Church is
absolutely of no use to him in that respect; for the Parson practically
paralyses his flock. The Chapel is better, for there the Chapel-folk
organize themselves and carry out in an authentic way many a little
scheme for their own satisfaction or entertainment. The Village Club and
the Village Co-operative society are just beginning in many places to
show an independent and progressive life; but after all the Village Pub.
strikes its roots deepest and widest, and if on a healthy basis is the
natural meeting-place where all these other movements germinate and from
whence they spring.
XVII
HOW THE WORLD LOOKS AT SEVENTY