Page:Farm labourers, their friendly societies, and the poor law.djvu/32

 excellent institution to a position which would enable them to dispense with assistance from the poor-rate, excepting under unusual pressure, when they might properly claim its assistance. With the exception of an inconsiderable proportion compared with the number of labourers in this populous county, and comprising the best of them, farm labourers can with great difficulty be brought to join the society. It is true that no money is spent on annual festivals, and doubtless an attraction which has an influence over the rural classes is thereby lost, and so long as the law which will allow the managers to spend a large sum if they pleased in the comparatively useless effort to attract the attention of labourers by advertisements and placards, but will not allow one farthing in the best of all advertisements, a well-conducted annual festival, continues in force, so long must this advantage be foregone. But the principal obstacle to the progress of the society among the farm labourers is their fear that by joining it they will lose the provision of the rate, to which apparently to themselves they contribute either nothing at all or else contribute more than is right under the compounding system in force. When the society was first established, many of the employers persuaded their labourers to join; and paid or assisted the new members for a time in their contributions. All such assistance proved insufficient to retain the bulk of them, who, after paying considerable sums to the society, deserted it and returned to their wallowing in their pauperising beer-house clubs. The main difficulty from that time to this, a period of upwards of forty years, is to raise these men by means of the society above pauperism. And although it succeeds in many cases in effecting such rescue, the effort is rendered doubly arduous by the obstacles already noticed.

We have thus endeavoured to assist the reader to form a just opinion of the farm labourer with regard to his ability to secure an independent provision. With certain exceptions, by no means numerous, he is unwilling to exchange the dole provided for him by others for an honestly earned independence of his own winning. And inasmuch as he has framed the benefit society in such wise that it will meet his requirements, and is thereby injuring himself morally and socially, and at the same time unjustly burdening the ratepayer, the conditions which have induced him to this downward and mischievous course must be taken into account before remedial measures can be applied. In addition to the alterations already referred to in the administration of the laws of relief and of the mode of collecting the rate, certain regulations relating to members of benefit societies might