John Bailey Denton

“ If the wheat region had been of small extent the increase of population would have been quickly limited to the food resources of each country. A continued development of mining and manufacturing enterprise in Great Britain would have been impossible. For nothing can be done without bread. Wheat is the common food, the real staff of life. The hardworking poor are far more dependent on and much larger individual consumers of it than the rich. ”

“ I have no doubt that the Legislature which shall pass the great measure of pacification for Ireland, which is now under its consideration, will in due time complete the work by a just land law, which will give greater security to the employment of capital in the cultivation of the land and call into action that surplus labour, without which its latent fertility cannot be fully developed. ”

“ Speaking again from my own experience, I have found that cattle, under the charge of a man who thoroughly understands them, will fatten quicker, and in every respect do much better with less food, than under a man who, from attempting indiscriminately all the duties of the farm, is master of none. In the minor matter of poultry, I have known many pounds lost by the want of proper treatment of them, and have found a labourer's wife with a small plot of ground, who has brought intelligence to bear, has raised more poultry than has been produced from a farm of several hundred acres. ”

“ To confine our efforts, however, to elementary school learning would, I contend, fail in object we all desire—which is, to see the farm labourer earning more money by labour of greater value to his employer. To do this, technical—that is, practical—education must be associated with primary school teaching; that his mind may be actuated with special reference to his duties. Technical education, I believe, has been more than once explained in this room to mean practical tuition in those operations which men are called on to perform in the business of life. ”

“ Generally speaking, the economy of the farm-kitchen in cooking is much greater than that of the cottage. Therefore, all things being equal, if I were a young labourer, I should always make love, not to black eyes or blue, but to a good plain cook—though it might suit all the better if the plain cook were a nice-looking girl. ”

“ The natural tendency of the gradually falling price of wheat in this country since 1848, has been to diminish the breadth of our own wheat. And the force of that tendency, in spite of the great increase of gold, shows the steadiness of its operation. There has been a yearly increase of consumers, with an increased power and capacity to obtain bread, an increasing ratio in the supply of gold, the representative of its money value; and yet in spate of all that, the price has declined, and the average breadth of wheat grown in the United Kingdom has diminished. ”

“ It is due to various causes special to rural life, but perhaps the most powerful of all is, the belief that existed largely at one time, and still lingers with some few farmers, that education disqualifies a labourer for manual work in the field. This belief had its origin in the little education possessed by the majority of farmers themselves in times past, though at the present time there is no class more quickly awakening from indifference to the benefits of knowledge than the farmers. ”

“ I am satisfied that, if the educated gentry of the country would now and then extend their interest in the direction indicated, by communicating information on any common object which they may thoroughly understand—it should, however, be a condition that the information should be fundamentally sound—they would not only instruct the uneducated of the village, but they would impart knowledge to their own class, which would be eagerly seized and reciprocated. ”

“ I will not here dilate on the manner in which the children of the labourer should be taught at school, nor enter upon the arguments for and against compulsory education. I am content to express my conviction that primary education at school—consisting of reading, writing, and arithmetic—is essential as the basis of improved practical knowledge, even though it be called forth in the duties of the only class now omitted from the franchise ”

“ The state of agriculture in France is of much importance to the consumer of bread in this country. In some recent years she has contributed one-third of our whole foreign supply of wheat, considerably more than the entire produce of Scotland and Ireland. A good crop in France, therefore, at once tells on our prices, whilst a failure brings her large population into competition with us in the general market of the world. She has a vast breadth annually under wheat, but the yield is very small. ”

“ I consider it a fallacy to suppose that the labourers of one district are as good workmen as the labourers of another, and that for the services of each, when applied to the same object, the same money should be paid. ”

“ And when we consider the extent of rich countries within the wheat region farther east which are scarcely begun to be tapped by the railway system, we must feel that we are yet far from having reached the limit at which a moderate rate of price will bring us sufficient supplies. For wheat, which forms the great staple of the food of civilised man outside the tropics, occupies of all cereals the widest region suited to its cultivation. ”

“ Active hands, directed by superior intelligence, already obtain money wages above the mean of 16s.; and as there is greater scope in agriculture for the exercise of judgment than perhaps in any other trade or pursuit, in which physical labour forms so great an element, owing to the diversity of its objects and the casualties which affect them, there is no reason to doubt but that with an increase of knowledge, on those cardinal points which alone can enhance the value of labour, the earnings of the whole class may be increased. ”

“ The only difference between the present system and that which I would suggest would be, that a youth employed on a farm should be so systematically engaged that he should early learn, by a species of apprenticeship, all that can be practically taught upon it, and that the shepherd, the dairyman, or the engine-man, as the case may be, with whom he should be placed, should receive a bonus for teaching him all he knows. ”

“ The dry-earth system commends itself to the minds of many as the most suitable for villages, because each resident may preserve the refuse of his cottage for the benefit of his own garden without injuriously affecting his neighbour; and this being a very desirable object, the problem has to be solved how, by combined action, all the residents of a village may be brought into one common system of proceeding. As the wage-paid labourer cannot of himself do this, it would appear positively necessary that the owners of village property should take the initiative. ”

“ Sad as this picture is, it is a satisfaction to know that the rate of agricultural wages throughout the country has increased within these last thirty-five years quite so much as 20 per cent., while the prices of those provisions and supplies which constitute the ordinary food and necessaries of life have, on the whole, decreased in the aggregate about 10 per cent. The price of meat and cheese has increased within the last few years at an extraordinary rate. ”

“ The only reasonable ground for keeping the children of an agricultural labourer from school, is the circumstance that, having hungry stomachs to fill, and active bodies to clothe, they must earn something to pay for the food they eat and the clothes they wear ”

“ The Hitchin Friendly Institution, established in 1828, is, perhaps, based on as good a foundation as any in the country, as every member who insures against sickness is also compelled to insure for a pension in old age, an object declared by Mr. Hawkins its founder and great supporter, to be of "vital importance if the wage-paid classes are to be taught the advantage of respectability in providing for themselves when past work without application to the parish." ”

“ By subscription to local societies (if well managed) a labourer may, under the present state of things, contrive to obtain the means of support if sickness overtakes him while able to work, but a provision for old age and total incapacity is an object which vary few agricultural labourers secure. If the earnest interest of the upper classes in a parish could be manifested by taking a part in the management of benefit societies, very great good would attend them, and it would no longer be said that out of the 23,000 friendly societies which exist in England and Wales, there are not 20 solvent. ”

“ But the first-class, or small farmers, hold not more that one-eighth of the cultivated land,—the second-class, or larger farmers, holding seven-eighths of the whole.
We have already seen that the counties in England where the system of moderate-sized farms prevail have the smallest proportion of corn, and the highest of cattle and of dairy stock. They have a greater rainfall, a deeper soil, and are more productive of green crops. Now, if we exclude from consideration for a moment the 307,000 small farmers, that is exactly the state of Ireland. ”

“ As has been before remarked, the year gone by has been free from any trade dispute, a larger quantity of coal has been worked, and a larger profit has been realised by the partners than during any previous year, whilst higher wages have been paid to the workmen. It may, therefore, reasonably be hoped that the bond of union between employers and employed will be so strengthened that it will bear the strain of the adverse times which, sooner or later, must be felt by every member of our commercial community. ”

“ A man who has regular employment at wages finds an immense advantage in a good garden allotment beside his cottage, and that is vastly increased when that cottage is on the farm, away from the temptation of the beer-shop, and where, as part of his wages, he receives the keep of a cow. This is the system in the border counties, where agriculture is in the most prosperous state, and the agricultural labourer the best fed and clothed, the most educated and intelligent of his class in any part of the three kingdoms. ”

“ Moreover, as good labourers cling to comfortable homes, he can keep them, which is not the case with the occupiers of the miserable hovels that generally exist; and as newly-built cottages are now usually placed so as to reduce to a minimum the distance the labourer has to walk, whereby time and sinew are saved, the advantages to the employer are, in the aggregate, equal to the difference between the return due to the condemned hovel that due to the improved cottage, and thus, in point of fact, the farm labourer receives in a better home an equivalent to increased wages. ”

“ But taking the land of Ireland as it is, and the circumstances of the country, and its mode of agriculture, there is a general consent of the most competent judges in that country, that farms below 15 or 20 acres are too small to afford a due return for the entire labour of a man and his family. It would therefore follow that 130,000 of the small farmers, with their families, are as many as the remaining eighth of the surface of Ireland can profitably maintain as farmers, and that there will then remain a surplus of 170,000 and their families. ”

“ A very productive harvest in France will exercise an immediate influence on prices in this country. Not only does her demand for foreign corn cease, but from the small average yield and the vast acreage under wheat a slight increase in the produce tells quickly up. Last year I computed an increase of one bushel on the acre in France at upwards of 2,000,000 qrs. If her increase has been in anything like the same ratio as ours, France will have a large surplus for export, probably quite enough to meet any decline caused deficient crop in Southern Russia. ”

“ Till next harvest the price will very much depend on the rate of foreign imports. These come to as not so much in relation to price in this country as to the productiveness of the harvest abroad. A scarcity here and high will draw the surplus corn from every quarter of the globe to us but it will not cease to flow when the source of supply is abundant, however low the price may fall in this country. It is an axiom in political economy that no article can remain long below the cost of production. ”

“ When we turn to the statistics giving the occupation of the people in the population returns of the last census, we find that whereas in Lincolnshire, which I select as the best-cultivated county in England, the number of agricultural labourers is 52,871, and the number of people living by the sale of beer is 1317, in Dorsetshire the number of agricultural labourers is 19,434, and the number of persons selling beer and cider is 582, showing a proportion in the former case of one beer-seller to 40 agricultural labourers, and in the latter, one beer-seller to 33 labourers. ”

“ The next object in which the higher classes can help the lower is in establishing and maintaining garden allotments under a provident system of management, by which a labourer, having allotted to him a rood of land, may pay, during his active life, a rent more than sufficient to satisfy the landowner, but which it is quite worth his while to pay, to secure the profit which the gardening of a rood of land will give. ”

“ When piece-work can wholly take the place of day-labour, a labourer may earn 25 per cent. more than by the day. The total value of the beer and cider supplied to each labourer as his allowance, at hay-time and harvest, when employed in drilling and machine threshing, and when engaged in piece-work, if spread over the whole year, would amount to from 1s. to 2s. a week more, according to locality. With these additions to his direct money wages, the farm labourer gains from 15s. to 16s. ”

“ It has been a source of regret and some disappointment to us that notwithstanding our endeavour to place our plan before you in the clearest light, and to arrange the working of the company on principles the fairest and moat advantageous to you as workmen, we have not been able to induce very many of you to take advantage of the great and unprecedented opportunity offered to you. ”

“ I will now address myself to those objects in which the upper and middle classes of rural parishes may voluntarily assist the lower class. Foremost amongst them are benefit societies. Of all things which the labouring man most dreads is his condition in his last days. ”

“ The table showing the percentage proportions of corn and green crop in each division of the United Kingdom is very interesting. In round numbers it appears that England supplies nine-tenths of all the home-grown wheat, Scotland and Ireland together only one-tenth. And the increased breadth, sown under the stimulus of the high prices of the past year in England, is equal to the whole acreage under wheat in Ireland. England produces more than three-fourths of all the barley grown in the British Islands, nearly all the beans and peas, and one-third of the oats. ”