Page:The agricultural labourer (Denton).djvu/36

 is also compelled to insure for a pension in old age, an object declared by Mr. Hawkins its founder and great supporter, to be of "vital importance if the wage-paid classes are to be taught the advantage of respectability in providing for themselves when past work without application to the parish."

The next object in which the higher classes can help the lower is in establishing and maintaining garden allotments under a provident system of management, by which a labourer, having allotted to him a rood of land, may pay, during his active life, a rent more than sufficient to satisfy the landowner, but which it is quite worth his while to pay, to secure the profit which the gardening of a rood of land will give. In the majority of cases a landowner who would not let a single rood of land to the labourer, would let a plot of many acres to the parish authorities, and would be quite satisfied in receiving for it a fair agricultural rent, say 2l. an acre, tithe free, which is equal to 3d. a pole or 10s. a rood. If the labourer paid 6d. a pole, or 1l. a rood, tithe and rate free, he would be paying double the acreage rent that would satisfy the landowner, and if the surplus was invested through the same agency as that of the "Post-office Benefit Societies," it would accumulate so as to provide the rent of the land after a certain number of years, whereby the labourer in his latter days would hold the land rent free. Thus he would ensure one means of support. But such an advantage can only be gained by the combination of the more wealthy parishioners, who together might become security to the landowner for the principal rent.

Again, village hospitals and infirmaries, enabling the labouring class who have lived a worthy life to gain proper medical advice and nursing at home, are working