The Hedge-layer Near my home the other day I went
out to see a specialist in hedge-laying demonstrate before school children and local craftsmen. He told me in incidental talk that he had been in Essex and had never had so many excellent pupils. I have since discovered that these pupils were chiefly unemployed men from various industries, and they proved extraordinarily skilful and teachable. Some of them have now found employ- ment with farmers. Their skill is referred to in the latest edition of Rural Industries, published quarterly on . behalf of the Bureau (6 Bayley Street, London) at the price of twopence. And this is not the only example of the transference of the industrialist to the rural occupation. Seven miles of the Penistone by-pass road have been " dry-walled " most skilfully by unemployed men who were previously steel-workers. The scale of such experiments is, of course, small, but the revival of the country craft is a very real thing ; and there is room on the land in general for tens of thousands of men—in reclama- tion, drainage, and upkeep as well as in cultivation.
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