THE FARNI LABOURER.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR,"]
SIR,-If "A. J. W.'s " practical acquaintance with landlords and farmers were equal to his generous sympathy with the labourers, he would know that the difficulty stated by "A Radical Squire" and "A Radical Landlord" as to labourers' cottages is a real one, and one for which he does not offer an adequate solution. It is a part, and an essential part, of that great question of the condition and prospects of the agricultural labourer which is become so important, and on which something more is neces- sary than generous sympathy, in order to our arriving at right conclusions. Whatever our class prejudices or our individual prejudices, the world moves on in its own prescribed course, and if we can read the signs of what that course is, we shall so, and so only, get light as to how we can co-operate with, instead of mistakenly resisting, a progress which is as desirable as it is inevitable. Now, all things indicate that the feudal or "paternal" relations of landlords, farmers, and labourers are fast breaking up. There are some men who desire to substitute a new "paternal" government for the old one, by making the State the sole landlord; there are others who believe it still possible and desirable to reinvigorate the old feudalism, whether to control the labourers in the interest of the farmers, or the farmers in the interest of the labourers, or to bring both into harmony by a combination of old " paternal " and new " economical " doctrine and practice. But things do not tend any of these ways. The old feudal order is giving place to the new economical one throughout the relations of landlord, tenant, and labourer; and our true business is not to try to keep alive old forms which have done their work, and are approaching inevitable dissolution, but to be ready hopefully as well as honestly to give up the old and accept the new, while making the transition from the one to the other as easy as possible. The change may be long in progress, but it is certain. We are beginning to understand that the best landlord is not the old-fashioned peer or squire, who underlets his farms to unimproving tenants at customary rents ; but the man who invests most capital in improving his estate, and who lets his farms to the tenants whose capital, skill, and industry enable them to give him the best rents, though they will hold their own views and vote their own way at the Union or Highway Board and at the county election and not follow their landlords' lead as their fathers did. And now this change in the relations of landlord and tenant is extending to that of the labourer with both, and if anyone doubts whether this change is desirable as well as inevitable, whether we should not at least grieve over, if we cannot resist, this conclusion that "cash payment is the nexus" between man and man, I would ask him to read the Life of Mr. Brassey, and judge whether any existing or possible feudal relation of landlord and tenant and labourer could be more manly, more generous, or more able to adapt itself to our highest sentiments and sympathies, than that strictly economical relation between the great contractor and every rank of those whom he em- ployed. The old relation between the farmer and the labourer is breaking up, apparently with more rapidity, and certainly much more danger of painful convulsion, than has accompanied the cor- responding process between landlord and tenant ; and, while much may be done to diminish the pain and the danger, move on we must, though by processes and with results some of which may, for a time, at least, be as little satisfactory to the labourer and his- sympathising supporters as to his old-fashioned employers. Mr. Forster and Mr. Arch have put into the hands of the agricultural labourer those two irresistible weapons, education and union, and he will certainly in the end win for himself full independence, with all the rights of a man and a citizen. What the ultimate form of that full independence will be, I do not pretend to assert;. but I do not see that it need be that of a peasant farmer or peasant proprietor. It seems to me not impossible that he may reach a better as well as different condition from either—a con- dition in which, under some form of co-operation, he and all of us- may retain the benefits of our peculiar English combinations of capital and labour, after all their evils have been eliminated, and their deficiencies supplied.
Let us, then, look at the present condition of the labourer with a view to discovering what are the germs and tendencies of the future for him. His miserable condition of mind and body shows that he is miserably paid, both as to amount and mode of payment ; for how miserable his condition is will be better understood if we do not overlook that his money wages de not represent his whole resources. They are insufficient for the direct demands which they have to meet, although they are eked out by his getting a house at a rent which—unless it is; a hovel not fit to live in—does not represent more than half its value, and by his getting from the poor-rates a provision in sick- ness and old age which, if his wages were sufficient, should come out of them. And then there are the allowances of food in harvest and of cider at all times, and the charitable doles of money, food and old clothes. These are the additions to the ten or twelve- shillings a week which make it possible for the labourer and his family not, indeed, to live, but, as one of them said, "to bide ;" but it is strange as well as sad that any man should think and say that these are blessings of which the labourers will be deprived if they listen to agitators, and under their guidance suc- ceed in asserting their right to make their labour the subject of purely economical contract ; and not less strange that any one should suppose—as Lord Lyttelton does in his letter in last week's Spectator—that all that the labourer and his friends demand is that these " subventions " should be made in cash at an outside sum of 3s. weekly. They are asking, and will continue to ask, something different from this, and something which, whether it comes out of rents or profits, -will have to be given, or the land will go uncultivated. And one of the first, if not the first, of the demands of the educated labourer will be for a proper house to live in. And this must be provided, not by the charity of a. paternal landlord, but on the same economical grounds as those on which the farmer is provided with his homestead. No cottage fit. for a man and his family to live in can be built for much less than £150, and while it is not an investment worth making on eoonomi-
cal grounds to build such a cottage unless the owner can get 110 a year rent, it is in fact impossible for the labourer to give more than £5 a year for it, if that. And only in exceptional cases could an adequate rent be obtained (as some suppose) by adding an acre or two of land at a higher rent than the farmer could pay ; the deficiency is too great for that. There are farmers so desirous to get and keep good servants that they will give their landlords the higher rent and take the lower only ; and there are landlords who, keeping the cottages in their own hands, let them at the lower rent. In either case, the difference between the actual and the adequate rent is so much ad- dition to the wages of the labourer, and the farmer whose land- lord provides his labourers with cottages at the lower rent does in fact pay so much less rent for his farm. If, then, the labourer is to pass from his present condition, in which his wages are sup- plemented by the various odds and ends I have mentioned, into one in which he can and will make an equal contract with his employer, he will either obtain such money wages as will enable him to pay Eeproper rent for his house, or it will be a part of his bargain with his employer that he shall have a proper house pro- vided for him ; and in most cases, the latter will be the more convenient to both, because it will save the necessity for the labourer wasting his strength in walking from and to a distant house daily. And when your correspondents pro- test that if a landlord lets the farmer take into his own hands the cottages he requires for the labourers on his farm, the farmer will use the power thus put into his hands to screw down the labourer and make him accept worse wages for fear of being turned out of his house, they forget the premisses from which they started. If we are to go on with the old paternal government, reinvigorated as far as is possible, if Mr. Forster and Mr. Arch are not doing any real work, and the labourer is to remain without intelligence or power of intelligently employing effectual means to assert and maintain his independence, and to sell his labour for what it is worth, then by all means let the paternal landlord keep the cottages in his own hands. But if we believe that a good time is coming in which the labourer will cease to be a serf, and when not only will he be able to exist on adequate wages, but the farmer will understand and act on the understanding that it is his interest to give such adequate wages, then how can there be any danger of his abusing his power to his own manifest injury ? We suppose that the farmer wants intelligent, steady, industrious, contented work- men, and that he can get them if he will give them adequate remuneration, one part of which is to be a comfortable house, but not otherwise ; is it conceivable that he should take the opportunity of one of such labourers being so settled in his home that he would make great sacrifices to remain, to screw down his wages by the threat of turning him out? Sooner or later the man would refuse to submit longer, and who could be induced to succeed him ? The farmer would only ruin himself by such a proceeding. I know that such things have been, and are done, under our existing paternal system of serfage ; and I by no means advocate the landlord suddenly making over all his cottages to the farmers, or in any other way throwing up duties which still exist, though they are gradually ceasing to exist in their old forms. I repeat that he may do much, and ought to do much, in guiding the pro- oess of transition, and making it gradual and gentle, instead of convulsive ; but let him frankly and finally resolve not to assert -any paternal rights when his children grow up.
Your correspondent, "A. Radical Landlord," has sufficiently met the question how we are to provide homes for those labourers who can no longer work for the farmer ; but what I am here desirous to ask the thoughtful friend of the agricultural labourer is, to consider whether an essential, if not the first, step to giving that labourer a proper share in all the interests and profits of the farm he cultivates, and to connecting him with—and not divorcing him from—the land, is that the farmer should be able to give, and should give every man who works constantly for him, a proper home in or near the farm. Other things must and will follow.
Let me advise every one who is interested in this question to read Sir Baldwyn Leighton's pamphlet, "The Farm Labourer of 1872." It is full of important practical suggestions for giving the labourer a share in the profits of the farm, and that in ways which seem less open to doubt on the grounds of practical difficulty than that of the Speaker. I wish, however, that Sir Baldwyn Leighton had given more detailed information as to the working of his plan for letting cow land to labourers, as there is so much question as to the possibility of making that scheme work.—I am, &c.,
A RADICAL SQUIRE.
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