Page:Farm labourers, their friendly societies, and the poor law.djvu/10

 the debatable land wherein independence ends, and pauperism begins, we must endeavour to call forth their own exertions if we would succeed in emancipating them from the abject serfdom of the Poor Law, and put them in the way of securing their independence by habits of self-reliance, and making good use of the opportunities afforded them.

With these remarks, we shall describe the farm labourer as he is in fairly wage-paid districts, and see what may be done in order to render the bearing of the Poor Law conducive to provident habits instead of being subversive of them. We shall, then, examine one or two of his benefit societies, whether formed and managed for him or by him; and it will be our duty again to urge the advantages which a system of insurances under Government supervision would place within his disposal.

Unless the education of the farm labourer is commenced early, and diligently prosecuted in the fields, he will not learn it well. It is, therefore, something more than a mere coincidence that necessity to help in earning his living enforces this law in nineteen families out of twenty. For this purpose the young labourer is taken from school as soon as he can earn 4d. or 6d. a day on the farm. He forgets all he has learned at school as fast as other boys do, and has few opportunities of doing more than just to regain what he was taught before ten years of age. As my specimen grows bigger, he is worth more money. He leaves home, and goes into service as a "mate," or lad, to help the waggoner, whose wife takes care of his clothes. He is speedily ambitious of all the distinctions of early manhood, and after passing through the half-dozen violent attachments which the matrons of Grumbleton denominate calf-love, he is seen some fine morning, before he is two-and-twenty, on his way from church with his bride, who is only seventeen. There is reason to hope that the blessings which the friends of the happy couple bestow upon them—and they can give them nothing more—will not be in vain, for they will have occasion for everything of the kind before long. If they cannot be accommodated under the roof of their parents, and wonderful are the contrivances made with this object in view, they locate themselves in a couple of rooms ready furnished in a noisy row of cottages. They hire the furniture of the broker, and, for a time, all goes on merrily. Work is plentiful. She is a managing girl, he is a hard-working lad; and by the time there are a couple of children, they are in a cottage. One thing is a trouble, and that is the broker's bill. As that wary dealer saw opportunity, he would sell them some