Baldwyn Leighton

“ But when actually under the guise of thrift and providence, that is, for the monthly or weekly meetings of a benefit club, labouring men assemble at the beer- shops, the landlord of which is the manager of the society, it is difficult for the most providently disposed to resist the insidious snare; and seeing that the friendly society, properly constituted, may ultimately be shown to be one chief correction and cure for the low condition of the labourer, you hereby have demoralization and improvidence introduced under the very guise of thrift—the fountain poisoned at its spring. ”

“ What a revolution in the status of officers and men it would come to be, if, instead of a huge sink of idleness, dissipation and uselessness, the army were to become one great industrial school, a national university, an atmosphere of efficiency and work, and the country were delivered once and for ever, from the disgrace of panic, and the no longer imaginary danger of national extinction! ”

“ It is quite remarkable what effect the possession of a cow-gate has upon a labourer; he seems quite a different person; he does his work much better, in an honest, cheerful way, as if conscious that he was not forgotten by those who employed him. ”

“ Let all have opportunities of rising and improving their condition. Let the best men feel that they are not dragged down to the levelment of the worst, and let all perceive that it depends on their own exertions whether they rise or not. But don't suppose from anything herein contained, that you can go down into a pauperised district, where a total disregard of the real welfare of the people has been aggravated by a fatuous administration of the Poor Law, and with this or any other plan in your pocket, set all right in a day or in a year. ”

“ Now it would be wrong to suppose that improved farming or development of agriculture in any direction can be anything but beneficial to the labourer and all connected with the land in the main; but during the process from the old to the new system, that is from the comparatively small farmer without capital, machinery, or science, to the manufacturer of beef and corn who makes the land produce double, in the march of improvement the human part of the system, the labourer, requires a little reconsideration and readjustment in regard to his land and his home. ”

“ The administration of Poor Law out-relief, which, in some parts, by indirectly supplementing wages, is in fact degrading and lowering the wages of the unskilled labourer. When both employer and employed, as donor and recipients of Out-relief look to the rates as a legitimate fund for indirectly and sometimes directly eking out wages, the effect cannot but be pernicious and demoralizing; and if this Conference only calls attention to this one fatuous fallacy it would not have met altogether in vain. For man, even the most depressed and degraded, is not a machine or an animal. ”

“ This much, nevertheless, may be said, that, however correct in law, or sound in theory, a system may be which encourages improvidence, or teaches the poor, as they are being practically taught in nearly every union in England, that any provision they make will disqualify them for relief—which is looked upon often as a sort of right—any such system must, eventually, come to be superseded by a more elevating one, and however perfect, even in principle, it may appear, you must first make it perfect in practice before it can be advantageously adopted. ”

“ To allot some two or three cottages, or more in some cases, to go with every large farm for waggoners and stockmen with a fair notice to quit, the labourer paying rent to the landlord who accepts the farmer's nomination on a change of tenancy, (and if these cottagers were well selected and had the run of a cow on the farm, there would not be much change of tenancy.) To let the rest of the cottages on the understanding that the labourers worked on the estate: this is frequently done, and combines the freedom of the market as it were with the necessary supply of labour. ”

“ The question of a better administration of the Poor Law, which, in some districts, seems to cause the very evils of improvidence and dependence it should seek to cure, would take too long adequately to go into here, more especially as some of the incidents of the southern counties of England seem almost beyond the power of Poor Law to deal with. It would seem as if labour were in excess, and that migration is the only cure. ”

“ Simple chaos as regards the state of practical defence in England, and some twenty-five millions a year spent in producing chaos; with one gleam of better things in India, where we are not playing at soldiers, but holding with the sword one hundred and fifty millions of hostile foreigners at our peril. Some apparent efficiency in our fleet, but great uncertainty as to future modes of marine warfare, whether the broadside or the ram, the sea-goer or the floating battery, the big gun, or the torpedo is to decide these matters for us hereafter. ”

“ What we chiefly value in the system is its marked effect in producing and perpetuating an orderly, respectable and well-conditioned peasantry. The problem which is generally looked upon as so difficult of solution is here solved with eminent success. It has been shown to be quite practicable to elevate the labouring man, not only without burdening the farmer or the landlord, but to the manifest benefit of both, to foster small holdings without depressing agriculture or retarding improvement, and to combine permanence with progress. ”

“ In one instance the man who took the lead was a farmer who dealt in timber, and employed occasionally thirty or forty men; he introduced a system of classification for his labourers just as he had worked his timber-men, which was adopted by others. In another case, a leading farmer of large intelligence and capital who had come from a distant country as a stranger to the local residents, set about a system of piece work in a low wage district, and with the help of an active landlord induced the surrounding farmers to do the same. ”

“ Land.—A great deal that is fallacious and absurd has been written chiefly by theorists and closet agriculturists, about peasant proprietorships, and "la petite culture;" for any one with practical knowledge of the subject is aware that the cottier or petty farmer endeavouring to live on his small place of ten or twenty acres is too often a warning and example to all who would set at defiance the practical facts of rural economy. ”

“ I cannot do that with middle-class men, who will lose nothing among their equals whether they fail or not. My officers shall give me a material guarantee in pledge, their honour,—that to them shall be more than their life." Thus spoke Frederick the Great; and in effect this is so provided by the Prussian system, which maintains such aristocracy by a process of selection to a regiment not very dissimilar to our election to a club, and also by other means. ”

“ In some parts of Northumberland it is the habit to allow the run of a cow to some or all of the labourers; in the Agricultural Commissions Report I find one case where a farmer had ten labourers, each of whom kept his cow on the farm. Besides being a source of considerable profit to the man, through the labour of his wife, it enables him to rear strong healthy children; and possibly to that cause may partly be attributed that fine type of agricultural labourer, that race of permanent giants there found, though something also must be due to nationality, and their superior education and thrift ”

“ I confess that I, for one, have yet to learn that the present teachings of political economy, competition, and cash payment, have improved the honesty of work; or that the dismal science, as it has been called, fulfils entirely the highest aspirations and purposes of humanity. ”

“ By sympathy and supervision, not by direct gifts, a beneficial relation has been promoted between rich and poor not uncommon to many country districts, but rarer in towns—and pauperism has been virtually exterminated. There are no demoralizing charities and few beer-shops—five beer-shops on the estate having been converted into cottages. Little or no money is ever given, but considerable sums have been spent in building cottages, and in draining and other improvements; and some such work is continually going on in the neighbourhood during the winter. ”

“ If he is to be of any account, of any real use to an employer or a farmer he must have some other outlook and distraction than the beershop—some better prospect than the workhouse. The want of sympathy and intelligence sometimes displayed, especially about the southern counties, in the depression of the rural labourer, caused by the careless and pernicious—it would not be too much to say the atrocious administration of Poor Law, as yet uncorrected by the central Board—call aloud for amendment and cure. ”

“ Such being the case, amid much doubt and uncertainty, caused by a revolution in the art of war, a strong and otherwise intelligent Government, having the bugbear of Bobus greatly before their eyes, conceives the idea that, if it could but abolish a system which has never yet failed us in war, and which somehow (rudely enough maybe) provides a sort of aristocracy for the officering of our army, every thing will settle itself without further trouble or organization. ”

“ Where boys or single men do not board in a farm house, there may be attached to the cottage of some permanent and trustworthy workman on the farm, a boarding house or second cottage for boys or unmarried men, who might be changing every year without affecting the permanent cottagers. It must be borne in mind that the progress of farming has made the relative difference between classes greater than before; the better way to meet this difference is by some system of cooperation or industrial partnerships referred to later, giving all the labourers some sort of interest in the farm. ”

“ It must be left to every farmer for himself to work out how best to put such a plan into practice—but certain I am that every farmer who in these days wishes to make farming profitable, would do well to consider how to give to every labourer on his farm some sort of an interest in the profits of that farming. ”

“ What value they may have arises entirely from their being a record of Fact; a description of the successful application of the simplest, and yet most neglected, economic truths to the condition of the poor: Thrift, Sympathy, and Work, instead of Improvidence, Cash-nexus, and Charity-doles, and it is certain that the same results as are exhibited here, incredible as to some they have appeared, may be attained elsewhere in town as well as country, if individuals informed and capable are forthcoming. ”

“ A crass, selfish, and timorous Plutocracy, destitute of convictions or politics, incapable of greatness or of government, and careless of national honour that costs money, has so usurped the position and the power of the old Aristocracy,—has so fooled with "liberal sentiments" and Cant the new Democracy, that we have now come to this;—nothing but this—Anarchy plus Bobus!—or in case of actual invasion, it may be—Anarchy minus Bobus! ”

“ The money can be advanced by some of the land improvement companies at about 6 per cent, repayable in twenty-five years; and though a landlord might not be able suddenly to rebuild a number of cottages out of income, he will not find the interest on the money in excess of the return of rent so heavy as to debar him from gradually improving all on his estate; and against this is to be placed the elevation of the labourer, and the economic necessity of their being housed for the cultivation of the land. ”

“ Now on most boards the chairman and officials are well able to administer the funds on a sound principle; but they are overruled by the other guardians, who would substitute for broad economic views such suicidal motives as supplementation of wages, private interest, penny wise policy, or misdirected charity. The difficulty of the remedy is that even when right principles of discrimination are adopted, the change must be exceedingly gradual: you cannot unteach dependance in a day; self-reliance and thrift require more than a single winter to learn. ”

“ And first by way of garden allotments—In some parts of England it is the custom to attach to every cottage, a considerable and sufficient garden of say one-quarter or one-third of an acre. This is chiefly the case where the cottages are scattered and not grouped together in villages; but there are many more districts where the garden attached to a cottage is miserably insufficient. Now it is in the power of every landlord and every farmer to remedy this state of things, at no perceptible loss to himself by letting off in portions, of say one-quarter of an acre, some field or part of a field. ”

“ Then as to soil, it will be found that where the soil is rich, the farms large, and the farmers men of capital, the position of the agricultural labourer will be better on the whole than where with small farms and struggling tenants, as in the south-west of England, the labourer is only employed for a few months in the year, and cast adrift to his own resources or the cold comfort of the Poor Law in winter. ”

“ Then landlords were appealed to in a quiet friendly spirit to let allotments and cow land, and even under some favourable conditions a co-operative farm to the labourers. The consequence has been that gradually and without any serious ill-feeling a comfortable and satisfactory relation between employers and employed has been established; the men have not taken advantage of the farmers at the harvest, and the wages have been satisfactorily settled without any pressure. ”

“ Is it possible to introduce into farming any industrial partnership, such as already obtains in manufactures? that is to say, by the farmer or employer giving, in addition to the weekly wages, other extra payments depending upon his own profits. I venture to assert, speaking from practical knowledge, that something of the sort is possible and desirable, and would also be for the advantage of employer as well as employed. ”

“ A chairman of a union who will find opportunities for constant personal communication with the master, schoolmaster, and other officials, will strengthen both his own and their hands, and a guardian who will inquire minutely of the inmates of a workhouse how they came there (generally flagrant improvidence) will learn some of the most fertile local causes of pauperism. An inquiry as to how those are living who have left the workhouse, and who have been refused out-relief, will often lead to still further disclosures ”

“ The produce of the ground, generally potatoes and grain, makes a considerable addition to his income, but the human aspect of the system and the contentment produced, with the attachment and interest in the soil, in what is most striking in the result, and the time snatched perhaps from the public-house and the zeal and care called forth in the labourer elevating him as a man and improving him as a workman. ”

“ The systematic adoption of strict and sound principles in giving out-door relief: the chief one being an attempt to set a premium on thrift and a discount on improvidence, as far as the present Poor Law will allow.
(2.) Personal devotion to the work—a constant unremitting energy on the part of one or two guardians, acting and re-acting on the officials. It is unnecessary to remind an audience of practical men that this minute individual service is the secret and the soul of success in carrying out any such intricate matters as the administration of a Poor Law ”

“ But in the case of the farmer with his labourers, he would have no difficulty in cutting off an acre or two of his farm and sub-letting it at a fair or even recuperative rent; and it seems a very small matter, where such advantage and contentment are found to ensue, for the labourer to ask or for the farmer to concede so much of interest in the soil on which he lives. ”

“ Furthermore, as a matter of principle, is the essential communism incorporated into our Poor Law itself altogether sound? Is not the system itself a matter of expediency and compromise, and therefore to be applied as a system of expediency and practical effect? What is the practical effect of this, not what is the strict theory, must be the question answered by the Poor Law Board. ”

“ Thus a farmer employing say half-a-dozen labourers might, by apportioning one or two acres out of his farm, give each a quarter or a third of an acre, which would probably be more valued by the men than a considerable rise of wages; and at the same time, he might hold out a prospect to any of his men who should have saved sufficient money to give them a run for a cow, or apportion another two acres for that purpose. ”

“ The landlord of farms is obliged necessarily to provide cottages for the labourers on the farm as much as buildings for the farmer. That they must then be looked on practically as part of the landlord's outlay on the farm. When let, as they generally are, at non-remunerative prices, they are actually let in supplementation or part payment of wages; but in such an arrangement an injustice is done to the other owners of cottages, and yet more to the tenants in the neighbourhood, namely, those built independently of any farm ownership. ”

“ The land ought to be held in connection with a farm, or an estate, so long that is as the labourer worked thereon. The results of this system, as shown on my own estate, in raising the labourers, and inducing them to save money, and so placing them in a condition of comfort and independence, notwithstanding low wages, is quite inconceivable. ”

“ Should the applicant have more land than a garden, the guardians would refuse out-relief, except medical or temporary, on account of the bad example to the poorer neighbours. Should the bedrooms be over-crowded, except with a man's own family, the guardians might refuse out-relief.
If a man or a woman's character is indifferent, out-relief is generally refused, but in the instance of members of benefit societies the case is always favourably considered. ”

“ Very considerable interest has been taken by the Chairman and some of the other guardians in the condition generally of the inmates, and especially in the school. The children are not only taught reading and writing, but they are industrially trained and so fitted for service that there is never the slightest difficulty in obtaining them places; there is, in fact, a local demand for them. It has been found by careful enquiry that a very small number of these children ever return to the workhouse, and hardly any who have had time to experience the effect of the training, so carefully bestowed. ”

“ Showing the pauperism proceeding at a decreasing ratio to the increase of population. Out of 600 unions in England this is the only one that exhibits a smaller proportion of out-door poor to in-door. For anything approaching a parallel you must go to the Irish Poor Law, where the regulations and medical relief make comparison difficult. But the ablest men have now declared their convictions that it is not the in-door but the out-door pauperism that is the subject that most demands attention and reform. ”

“ We must give men some outlook and hope, some means of investment and natural savings bank if we would wean them from the beer-shop, and make them independent of the fatal communism of the Poor Law. On the estate in question no cottager is taken till he can produce evidence of money saved, if it be only a few shillings, as a test of providence ”

“ The spoken word, the written poem, is said to be an epitome of the man; how much more the done work. Whatsoever of morality and of intelligence; what of patience, perseverance, faithfulness, of method, insight, ingenuity, energy; in a word, whatsoever of strength the man had in him, will be written in the work he does. ”

“ Administer generally your relief on a more liberal scale to those who have made some attempt at provision for themselves than to those who have not, and so set a premium on thrift.
(2.) As a rule the annuity or allowance of a friendly society should not be directly supplemented, since it ought to be adequate; but give to non-subscribers, ceteris paribus, two thirds only of what members are receiving, or the offer of the workhouse. ”