Page:The English Peasant.djvu/175

 But here it ends. Ignorance, notwithstanding high wages and good living, robs them of all the higher benefits they might obtain from their prosperous circumstances, and renders them as truly dependent as are the rest of their class.

The great drawback of their lives is their unceasing, protracted labour, the compulsion put on their wives to turn out into the fields, and the temptation offered to make use at the very earliest age of the money-making power in the children.

Had they knowledge, they would find out that a little combination among themselves would soon shorten the hours of labour without lessening the wages. So too they would see clearly that a wife's services at home are worth vastly more than she can earn abroad, especially if there is a young family. Had they knowledge, they would never dream of putting forth such an excuse for their negligence as this:—I can't read, and yet I can earn my living; my father couldn't read, and yet he could earn his living: what good will book-learning do my son? Why, as Farmer Jones says, "It will spoil him and make a fool of him."

This ignorance not only works to oppress the poor waggoner, but also to oppress the ratepayers. If a man was well educated, if he had read a few books that had nothing whatever to do with his daily toil, he would feel' it a disgrace and a degradation to ask for charity when he had the whole world open before him in which to earn a living. Such a man must utterly break down under the combined influence of sickness and poverty before he could ever descend to apply for parish relief.

But the Kentish waggoner has been educated under the "mind your own business" system, and knows of only two alternatives,—to work in his native fields, or live at the expense of his native parish. The agricultural labourer's position is an anomaly in the nineteenth century; it is a relic of feudalism minus all its advantages. He has been taught that his own position is that of the serf who tills the land; to want more education will only unfit him for his post. "I am content," he argues; "I will do my duty to the land, but when I can't work then the land must do its duty to me."

He has not risen out of serfdom, and the doctrine that he is to learn nothing but what will fit him to follow the plough will keep him there for ever. If so, we may expect an ever-increasing