The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1874-08-22 00:00:00

PEASANT FARMING.

-The Sposcial Reporter of The Timar, writing from
last week, thus narrates Lis interview with a
Peasant Farmer :
Happening to call upon a farmer in East Suffolk, the con•
venetian turned upon peasant proprietondilp and farming.
"Would you like to see one of our small corners? " said Vie
farmer. ." We have nut many of them about here. but I ran
Wow you one who happens to be working for me now, and a
more industrious or a thriftier fellow it would be hard to match
In the whole country Of course,! said I should be glad to see
him,but asked how it came to pass that the man was working
for somebody clse and not for himself? The ans.,
was that there was reelproeity in his doing no. The
farmer now and then lent the cottier a plough and
hones, charging for the service • aunt so moderate
that the cottier now, at hay time, whir teered his services to
the farmer in return. He was a man, too, whose work was
worth having. Though not far off sixty years old, no
ordinary labourer worked with the Intensity and thorough-
ness of this titan, who laboured for ethers as he was acme-

tamed to lalsnir for himself. Upon his own little six-acre
holding, his wife (he had no children) worked in her way
almost as hard aahe did, and his six acres were excellently
fanned. " Then I suppose that between them they do
very well'" " You had better bear the man's own story,"
replied the farmer, •• and do yon put what ques-
tions you choose • I will say nothing " 'lf he man came at
night from the 'hay-field a tine tough old fellow, quite
he.ing out the report inade of his capacity for work. Ile
was shrewd and keen too, and when the reasons why we
wished to see hint svna explain.' he told us freely and intel-
ligently all we eared to know The conversation proceeded
thus, and 1 retail his own words as nearly as I can repro-
duce them from memory " Yours is a nice bit of land,
I hear?" " Yes, it in a very kitty little bit ; I've nothing to
complain of in that way." •• How much do you fermi"
"Six no rep Two of them I got by courtship "(they came
to him through his wife, who had the freehold); four
acres 1 hire." " What do they cost you a year ?"
Rent, rates, and taxes on the six acres come to about
cit." "What are you growing lust now ?" " A bit of
cheat, another bit of barley, and some peas and beans."
And you can show some good farming. I heae ?" " Yes,
11:/113 grown twelve coorubni (forty-eight bushels) of wheat an
acre, sad fourteen to sixteen wombs of barley. By fork and
spade my land is made like a garden. In general I expect to
grow pretty nigh double as much as a fanner grows on his
land. At least, I should be in • bad way if I didn't." "Do
you buy your manure ?" "No, I can't afford that. I keep
pigs and get manure from them" "Then do you pat more
11181111111 into your land than a fanner would?"" No, but I
put twice or three times as much labour into •• Well,
then, it ought to pay you pretty well? " " Yes, it ought, but
It does not " "Do you mind telling me what profit you make
out of your six acres after allowing for your labour r 1 will
tell you what I have often told Mr (the farmer) before.
Allowing nothing for my own or my wife's labour (and she works
as hard as, ally man) I don't make as, a week out of my farm.
For two years I lost £l5 a sear ; another year I lost £lO.
Those were bad years for everybody : the seasons were
against no and what I should have done if I had not had
little to fall back man, I don't rightly know." I suppose
you mean that you have 55. a week left alter paying house-
hold expenses?" Indeed, I mean nothing of the kind.
What I say...that for 20 >ears past I have only made a gross
profit of ine, a.week, dedinting nothing whatever for labour,
cost 01 living, Or clothes ; and if you like to call, you will
find my books bear me out."

I afterwards discovered that this peasant proprietor had
money Invested at interest but that it had not come to him
out of the land may be gathered from what followed If
you waut to injure a poor man," he continued, "give him
fiye or six acres of land and make him try to live out of it.
lieu may tell that to Mr. Arch if you like. My opinion is
that if the Union were to give each of its members floe
acres and espect them to live out of the land, it would
clean burst up in two years. Why, a labourer earning His.
or 17k a week, as the men about here do, is far better
off than I am. A labourer has nothing like the care and
anxiety. Dear, dear what a bad time I had last year
Sly new died when she farrowed, and I lost most of the
pigs. That's the sort of thing that cripples a small
farmer, Sir, and keeps him awake at nights." You have no
family, I think?' "Lord bless you 'lll hail had any children.
I should have been stumped out long ago. It is my little bit
of property which has kept me going." - But why do you
keep on farming if it does not pay ?" "Well, 1 wished to
give it up long ago, but somehow I kept on, for I always
hoped to get a little more land. Now, it I had about 15
acres instead of six, I could do much better." " If you cannot
make sin acres pay, what makes you think you could succeed
with 15?" " Wily, I should then keep a horse and do my own
ploughing. At present I have to do the work of the horse on
ary itx acres, and that takes a deal out of me. I could also
then afford to keep a man. I should have two cows.
My wife would milk them and make the butter, which she
would take to market and sell. The let (skim) milk we
should give t • the pigs. I should have a breeding sow and
six or seven pigs, which would supply manure enough." "But
you would want capital for all this, and would have to begin
by borrowing it" I said this before knowing the extent of
the man's resources. With a good-humoured smile, he re-
plied, "1 think I know where to go to for a little money."
" And how about the farm buildings?" " Oh,! could run
up what buildings 1 wanted, without troubling my land-
lord." " Aud if the disease came, and you lost your
cows, as you lost your pigs " " Yes, no doubt that some-
times happens but I should manage to start afresh, I dare
say " "But I hear that some of your neighbours, with 20 or
ao acres, do not get on much better than you do with your
six acres., What makes you suppose you would succeed
where they have failed? " Well, the fact is, some people,
when they see gold lying on the land, won't stoop to pick it
up." Ile meant, of course, that the land was ill-cultivated.
It all ended in a renewal of his craving for a little more
land "If I only had 15 acres," he said, kindling into sudden
enthusiasm, " 1 should not care to call the Queen my
cousin " The rustic wish could find no higher expression.
I sos not without hope that the result of the interview may
he to satisfy the ambition of this sanguine, sturdy old
peasant, and give him the chance he covets. Yet the few
10 aud 20 mere farms in the neighbourhood presented no en-
couraging exaruples of success. I heard of these small
farmers "living from hand to mouth," cramped for want
of capital, and farming badly in consequeme, hard hit
by a bad season, ruined by two or three bad seasons
in suecession. appealing to their landlord and their
neighbours by a "brief" : subscription list) if disease
...antes off their cow or their horse meet with any accident
-in short, struggling on with as ill-rewarded perse-
verance and tenacity. It may be that the hard-working
peasant we saw, shrewd and knowing in things agricultural
beyond his fellow., will do better than they are doing ; but,
after all, it is only the triumph of hope over experience In
spite of his labour and thrift, he has failed to cultivate his
em s acres to advantage. He only hopes he may succeed
better in cultivating 15 acres, and no doubt his possession
of some spare capital places lain high above his neigh-
bours. As kg in so hopeful, one hopes he may be able to try
the further experiment, and get the nine or ten acres more
land on which he has set his heart Meanwhile, his experience
upon the favourite five-acre holding, of which we have lately
heard so much, is suggestive. That it is a truthful experience,
truthfully told, lam convinced and, without attempting to
foand any general conclusion upon an isolated case, it is cer-
tain that this peasant proprietor, who could make little or
nothing out of six acres of productive land, tor two acres of
which be had to pay no rent, would laugh to scorn a proposal
that he should live upon the produce of five acres of waste
land, even if he had it rant free.
The farmer afterwards Improved the occasion. "Mr.
Arch," he said, •• has several times lately told the towns.
people that if the labourers till the soil for theinselvea, beef,
mutton, and bread will be cheaper; and he insults the
farmers by declaring that the land is not half cultivated. Is
it not clear there is a point beyond which loch cultivation
sloea not par Slay that the normal crop of wheat is four or
live quarters to the acre. It does not follow that by increasing
the production to six or seven quarters you far u to greeter
profit. On the contrary, the result may lie a financial
loss. Good land fairly but cheaply cultivated pays. So
does pasture when stock fetches a fair price. But expen-
sively. farmed arable land rarely pays by itself It may do
so upon a large farm as one branch of a well-organized system
of farming. But little bite of arable land cultivated alone
will only pay near large towns, where an easy, remunerative
market can be had for every sort of produce. 'this is the kind
of experience which is daily being gained on small farms. Our
old crofter-and& fine old fellow he isi-farnis high, gets more
out of his land for the general consumption, and so, I suppose,
is a model cultivator. You have heard what the result is to
him personally. To use his own expression, he has 'picked
up the gold' which other men would have let lie: but he
has had to buy It with his labour, and he has bought this
gold too dear. Then does the community derive any
permanent benefit from labour so squandered I If you put
the current market price upon this man's labour, the wheat
he grown costa him much more than the price it fetches in
the market. And is it not a misdirection and a waste of
forces for spade husbsuidmen to grow wheat which costs
them --say 705 a quarter; whereas the large farmer at home,
or Hsi foreigner, can grow it for 60s or less ? " For
one element the farmer did not allow. As an abstract pro-
position, or if the peasant's surplus labour were sure of being
otherwise utilized, the reasoning just presented may be free
from flaw. But how if, save for the inducement offered by
land which he rents or owns, the peasant never puts forth
Ilia full streneth? Then the community loses the benefit of
as: unemployed reserve of labour, and whether this might
not be more profitably bestowed in other channels is &point
of little practical moment.

plots

The Times has the following leader in connection I
with the foregoing:—
Of the many plans which have been suggested of late for
improving the position of the English agricultural labourer,
there is none, perhaps, in greater favour with these who
assume to be kis friends than that which would raise him to •
the rank of an independent landed proprietor, and no permit !
him to work for the direct benefit, not of others, but of Inni•
self. There is much at first sight that may be advanced in ,
favour of the proposal. There is plenty of uncultivated land I
in Eegland with which the experiment could be tried. and !
there is probably no land, however highly cultivated, which
yields as barge a crop as could be obtained from it by the ern- !
ployment of more labour. Countless families, it is urged,
might he fed by this unclaimed bourty of the earth 1
and many and loud are the grumbles that by sonic strange ,
tyranny of the landowners production is limited, and the 1
food supply of the country kept down in amount. As for the !
labour which it would cost to increase our present harvests, I
there is, indeed, little doubt that on the proposed terms tins !
would willingly be bestowed Both argument anti example ;
may be adduced to prove that a man will work harder for '
himself than be will work for anybody else, and that he !
will grudge no pains where the fruit of his exertions will
be his own. The Ideal, therefore, which is set before us
by the advocates of the *stein of which we speak is
.ene which would create, in the place of large farms of
hundreds of acres each cultivated by hired labour,
a multitude of smaller holdings on which each man would be ;
his own employer with an exdlusive right to the entire benefit
of his exertions It is urg,d that the total produce thus
raised would be larger ant would lied more mouths- that
districts which are now waste ground might by these means
he brought under the spade or plough and the conclusion is I
that not only would the country he made richer by the change, !
but that the cultivators of the sett would be better fed, '
and would be niore happy and contented than they are or
ought to be at present. There is no need, it is argued,
to seek in distant regions of the globe all outlet
for our surplus population while we possess with-
in our own limits the very thing of which we
are its search. It is the duty of the Oovernment to afford
facilities for the desired change, and the labourer himself
will gladly do all the rest. At the present time when dis-
content is rife among the agricultural population, these !
views have a chance of being heard which they have never bad '
before. They are dinned perpetually into the ears of our farm
labourers, and are quite sufficiently plausible and attractive
to comniand a ready audience. They are not, indeed, new,
but for all practical purposes they are new to those to whom
they are addressed, and they fail ha natnrally with many of
the eherished traditions and prejudices of the labouringclaases,
they area convincing proof of the tyranny of ferniera and land-
owners, and they promise Jost what the labourer naturally
desires--a life of independence and Of COMIDIt. It is not
strange, them that they are uttered, and still lc M can it be
thought strange that they are gladly listened te and be! ieveil
it is worth while, therefore, for every reason to examine
them. end see, if we can, to what they re illy tend, and
in what degree they may be expected to fulfil the hopes
which their authors and disciples have ba,cd upon them.
We have said already that Peasant Farming is neither a
new nor an untried thing. In some form or other, it is as old
as agriculture itself, and is the first and most obvious as
well as the simplest and rudest form in which the Olive f
the ground can be carried on. We could learn all about it
by aid of the experience of other countries, where it has
long actually prevailed, and where the verlict of those who
have studied it is by no means unfavourable. It is, however,
not unknown among ourselves, WO we can see its work-
ing. therefore, tinder the circumstanc.as most fitted to
enable tie to forrn our Judgment We published
on Saturday a very interesting letter from our Cnecial
Reporter in the Eastern Counties, setting forth with
great minuteness the actual result of the proposed
scheme under the best circumstances in which it Is
likely that it could be tried. An East llsfioiii cattier,
thrifty, intelligent, and industrious, with six acres
of land partly his own, partly rented, and bestowing his
whole time and attention on making the hest of his little
bolding. is shown (tins as an example of the system which
Mr. Arch and others are so eagerly desirous to introduce.
The conditions of the experiment, if we may so term it, were
In this case more than usually favourable to its success.
Tile fortunate holder had 15011mn little capital, sufficient to
carry him through a succession of two or three had seasons.
Be was aided by a wife whose labour was not init,h leas
valuable than his own. Ilia personal qualities were Just those
most likely to conduce to success, lie gave his whole tone
and labour to Ids work, and it was far from inefficiently per-
formed. His land, carefully dug over with the spade, and
pith every inch oi ground turned industriously to account,