Agricultural labourer

“ The expression "agricultural labourer," for the purposes of the Labourers Acts, is defined by section 4 of the Act of 1886 to mean "a man or woman who does agricultural work for hire at any season of the year on the land of some other person or persons, and shall include handloom weavers and fishermen doing agricultural work as aforesaid, and shall also include herdsmen." ”

“ 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. ”

“ In fact, formerly, the agricultural labourers were but the smallest of the small farmers, and formed for the most part a kind of rear-guard of the medium and large farms on which they found employment. ”

“ The general introduction of agricultural machinery and agricultural chemistry has an inevitable tendency to demand a race of skilled labourers, instead of unintellectual serfs. But how do we deal with the labourer and his family? ”

“ But, so far as we can learn from statistical tables, the number of agricultural labourers—that is, those who are strictly employed in the cultivation of the land, and who cannot be spared from that most necessary task—has been rather on the decrease. ”

“ It is to be seen everywhere, in harvest-time as well as in spring and summer, at those frequently recurring times when English agriculture, so careful and intensive, wants extra hands. There are always too many agricultural labourers for the ordinary, and always too few for the exceptional or temporary needs of the cultivation of the soil. ”

“ After breakfast the farmer walks round the place, watches the men at work for a few minutes, and gives them instructions, and then settles himself down to some job that requires his immediate superintendence. If it is hay-time he takes a rake and works about the field, knowing full well all the difference that his presence makes.
The agricultural labourers, both men and women, are a slow set, never in a hurry ”

“ On the other hand, the farms run generally from 200 to over 1000 acres each; machinery is extensively used; the supply of labour, though not so superabundant as a generation or two ago, is still sufficient, the customary wage being 2s. per day. The men themselves struck me as being of finer physique than the agricultural labourers I have seen in any other part of the South or Midlands of England ”

“ Wages of ordinary agricultural labourers are now, as detailed in Bara Banki, five pice or six pice, according as they offer their services or are sought; or they get grain. Handicraft-men are of course better paid, carpenters get three annas in their villages, four if they leave them, smiths the same. Local weights and measures. I have referred to this subject at great length in the Kheri and Bahraich articles. ”

“ The chaff-cutter and pump, and so on, all depend on human hands to keep them going. Such is but a very brief outline of the innumerable ways in which arable agriculture gives employment. So the labourer and the labourer's family flourish exceedingly in the corn tillage. Wages rise; he waxes fat and strong and masterful, thinking that he holds the farmer and the golden grain in the hollow of his hand.
But now a cloud arises and casts its shadow over the cottage. If the farmer depends upon his men, so do the men in equal degree depend upon the farmer. ”

“ But agriculture is in a rude state. I saw them ploughing with a stick, and sawing with an axe, hoeing their corn with a shovel, and grinding it with a pebble. A few of our clever farmers, bringing with them their agricultural apprentices, would give new life and energy to the country. ”

“ Agricultural labor must, therefore, be much more versatile than labor employed in large-scale industry. Most industries, moreover, are able to run along at an even pace throughout the year, 345affording steady employment to a fixed number of workers. But in most forms of agriculture, the amount of labor required is much greater at some seasons of the year than at others, thus giving the farmer a labor problem of great difficulty to contend with. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Agricultural laborers are always sure of abundant employment and high wages. The labor of agriculture is of various kinds, and may be performed by any man accustomed to work, with little or no previous instruction. It consists principally in cutting up weeds with the hoe, cutting down sugar-cane, and throwing it into boats on the canals, to be transported to the sugar-house ”

“ Even the peasant has five acres of land allotted him by the government; and in his home garden he raises carrots and turnips and pumpkins and melons. The larger farmers raise wheat and corn and sugar beets, oats and all the cereals; and cattle in large numbers. [Pg 89] They raise their own food and they are chiefly vegetarians; and they carry their surplus in ox-teams to the nearest market. Prices are regulated by the Agricultural Society. Every farmer gives one or two days a year to the State and pays his taxes in kind. When crops fail, the Coöperative Agricultural Society lends him money. ”

“ Wherever the farmer sows not a full abundance of good seeds, weeds are certain to spring up. The farm must provide a fair and liberal income, [56] because want brings lack of true pride, breeds carelessness, even hatred of others, filches self-respect and courage. Therefore, if profits are desired, good land, land of wide agricultural capabilities, should be selected. The greater variety of crops the land is capable of producing and the more varieties the farmer raises, provided he does not exceed his mental and executive capabilities, the better will be his education and training. ”

“ Here, as nowhere else in the world, nature has provided all the essentials to agricultural success; there was but one mortgaged homestead in the entire township; it is the greatest strawberry mart in the world; the abundance of nutritious wild grasses render cattle and sheep raising throughout the year a source of great revenue, and the maximum of crop returns is secured with a minimum of labor. ”

“ On these farms every advantage of machinery, and every discovery in agricultural science, should be utilised [140] to the utmost. The crops should be carefully chosen with reference to soil and aspect—cereals, fruit, vegetables—and the culture adapted to the crop, the one aim being to obtain the largest amount of produce with the least expenditure of human labor. Whether land is most profitably cultivated in large or small parcels depends on the crop; and in the great area of the County Farm, la grande et la petite culture might each have its place. ”

“ Few of those who live in cities, villages, or other places than those where agricultural pursuits prevail; few of those, indeed, who have been tillers only of the subdued and time-mellowed soils of the old States and countries, have any adequate conception of the immense amount of hard labor required to clear off the primitive forest, and prepare the land for the first crop ”

“ In all of this activity of cultivation, the rush of harvest, and regularity of day-to-day chores, the farmer worked, not alone, but in conjunction with his family. Unlike the industrial worker, whose employment was discrete and separate from his home life, the farmer's home was his workshop, and his labor directly connected to his sustenance. ”

“ And what should I do here gentlemen, pointing out to you the uses of agriculture? Who supplies our wants? Who provides our means of subsistence? Is it not the agriculturist? The agriculturist, gentlemen, who, sowing with laborious hand the fertile furrows of the country, brings forth the corn, which, being ground, is made into a powder by means of ingenious machinery, comes out thence under the name of flour, and from there, transported to our cities, is soon delivered at the baker's, who makes it into food for poor and rich alike. ”

“ This book, is dedicated to the sons and daughters of the farms of the Republic as an expression of the author's realization, that Agricultural people constitute a large majority of its working units: That as such, its destiny is in the hands of their boys and girls, as its future guardians, fathers and mothers: That for the reasons stated, they should become its dominant thinkers and leaders: That Agriculture is the true basis of industrial and commercial success ”

“ He enjoys, too, a monopoly of the superior efficiency of interested labour, and as the personal efficiency of the labourer—his skill, his knowledge, his watchfulness, his care—are becoming not less, but more important with the growth of scientific farming, whether in corn raising or cattle rearing, the small farm system will probably continue to hold, if not to enlarge, its place in modern agriculture ”

“ In the agricultural group the unit is the farmstead. By that term is meant the whole complex organization of the farm, including the land and its products, the stock, the barns and the sheds, the whole family together with whatever houses it, the corps of workers, farmer, farmer's wife, sons, daughters, maiden aunts, working people unhired and hired—in fact, everything "animal, vegetable or mineral," as the children say when they play "Forty Questions," that ministers in any way to the success of the farm as a business and to its ultimate object, the happiness of the family living thereon. ”

“ Moreover, in a country where advanced farming is the rule, there is a remarkable, and, from the standpoint of national stability, most valuable, steadiness in employment. Good farming, by fixing the labourer on the soil, improves the general condition of rural life, by ridding the countryside of the worst of its present pests. ”

“ In the first place there is a large generation of agricultural laborers in England, now in the prime of manhood, who have just graduated, as it were, through all the scientific processes of agriculture developed in the last fifteen years. The ploughmen, cowmen, cartmen, and shepherds, even, have become familiar with the established routine; and every set of these hands can produce one or two active and intelligent laborers who will gladly and ably fill the post of under-foreman for a shilling or two a week of advanced wages. ”

“ His agricultural labour consists in superintending the cultivation of the small squares left for the growth of grain in the centre of the copses, to feed and attract the pheasants, and to keep them from wandering. These have to be dug up with the spade—there would be no room for using a plough—and spade-husbandry is rather slow work. An eye has therefore to be kept on the labourers thus employed lest they get into mischief. ”

“ And, so it has been with the agricultural laborers since 1915. Nearly every man who is eligible throws his whole spirit into the work of organizing and agitating his fellow man and many thousands of new members are taken in every year.
The I. W. W. came as a mighty boon to the harvest workers. What they have done for themselves in the past few years is but a marker in comparison to what will be accomplished in the future. ”

“ Two obvious consequences must have followed,—wages would have been lower, rents higher than they are now, while a very large proportion of the peasantry would be occupying farms half the size of those they arc at present cultivating. Now, low wages and high rents may be advantageous in a certain sense to the manufacturer, to the landlord, and to the recruiting sergeant; but how do they affect the masses—the tenant, the labourer, and the mechanic ?
When I was in the west of Ireland some 18 years ago, the rate of agricultural wages varied from half-a-crown to five shillings a week. ”

“ How much has been effected by the unassisted, unencouraged industry of a few individual settlers! We are all eating the produce of our own fields, and how sweet our bread! This is made in the simplest way—we grind the wheat in our own hand-mills, troubling neither flour-dressers nor millers, for a reason we have. ”

“ In harvest time, the superintendence of work continues till late, and in the autumn labour is not unfrequently prolonged into the moonlight, in order to carry the corn. It is a life, on the whole, of hard work.
In all this I speak of the ordinary middle-class farmer. The life of the higher class of agriculturists, who possess large capital, and employ bailiffs and all kinds of machinery, is of course not by any means so onerous. ”

“ The carpenter also was but a poor farmer, and his crop failed. So he gave up farming, and worked away at building houses, and making tables, and chairs, and bedsteads, receiving payment in potatoes, corn, wild-fowls, eggs, or sometimes in money. In the course of two or three years, some were bakers only, some poulterers, some potato merchants, and only about half of the company were farmers; of which the consequence was the land was better tilled, the corn better ground and baked, the fowls better fed, eggs more easily to be had, the potatoes better, and the huts kept in better repair. ”