Page:The farm labourer in 1872.djvu/24

 elevating him as a man and improving him as a workman. Some little personal direction and care are useful where many allotments are made, as some few labourers will be found unfitted to hold such; and there should be a stringent rule to give notice where the rent is in arrear. But in the case of the farmer with his labourers, he would have no difficulty in cutting off an acre or two of his farm and sub-letting it at a fair or even recuperative rent; and it seems a very small matter, where such advantage and contentment are found to ensue, for the labourer to ask or for the farmer to concede so much of interest in the soil on which he lives.

It might be worth while to mention, as it might easily be shown, that by thus allowing large garden allotments to labourers they would be enabled to pay a fair rent for cottages, say a return of four or five per cent, on the outlay, and this would solve another difficult problem for landlords. Then to some few select and thrifty labourers, and, under strict precautions, a further boon can be accorded in the grant of a few acres of grass to keep a cow. In some parts of Northumberland it is the habit to allow the run of a cow to some or all of the labourers; in the Agricultural Commissions Report I find one case where a farmer had ten labourers, each of whom kept his cow on the farm. Besides being a source of considerable profit to the man, through the labour of his wife, it enables him to rear strong healthy