Page:Agricultural labour.djvu/19

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AGRICULTURAL LABOUR.
15

is the limit. They always cultivate the land; cows are unknown, and Mr. T—— said he had known men get fifty bushels of wheat from their acre. I asked him if the farmers had objected as usual to the land being given, and he said they had, but that they had begun to discover that the men who worked best for themselves, worked best for them, and that the feeling of wishing to do what was best for the labourer had strengthened very much lately. The T——'s (that is the landlord's family) are very splendid in every way, while living most simply themselves. I saw some magnificent farm buildings, nothing cheap or contract-looking about them."

G.—At Assington in Suffolk, forty and twenty years ago respectively, Mr. Gurdon, the landlord, let two farms to the labourers to be rented on the co-operative, or more strictly, the joint stock system. The results have been very remarkable, and would require a separate paper to describe, but suffice it to say that fifty-seven labourers, out of a parish of six hundred, or perhaps about two-thirds of the workmen are shareholders, and thus have an interest in the soil; the shares have increased in value between 1,000 and 2,000 per cent. A general spirit of content and comfort exists; Pauperism is virtually extinguished, and the undertakings are succeeding admirably.

H.—Then there is the power of establishing a cooperative store, which might save a labourer's family one or two shillings a week, and encourage habits of thrift, subordination and federation. A gentleman farming in Leicestershire writes to me that he has established a co-operative store, which began with £13, and turned over £2,000 last year; and they have lately taken seventeen acres of land, the rent of which is paid by the profits of the store, and let out in allotments by them. He is shortly going to publish his experience in the form of a pamphlet.

In all these instances there are two constantly recurring features: the presence at one time of some In-