This page has been validated.
8
AGRICULTURAL LABOUR.

2. Piece work; more of this can be done on a farm than is generally supposed, if a little management is used; for instance turning and carting manure by the yard.

3. Industrial profits or payments by results; in a pamphlet entitled the "Farm Labourer in 1872," published by Messrs. Bentley, I have endeavoured to set this out in detail; and latterly many practical men, including the present Speaker of the House of Commons, have turned their attention to this point.

4. Good cottages and large gardens with fruit trees, or allotment, which will go far to pay the rent for the cottage, and improve the quality of the workman by teaching him to work on his own account: "good homes are more than high wages," says Lord Sydney Godolphin Osborne, in the Times, and practical experience entirely bears him out.

5. Land to keep a cow, say two or three acres attached to some of the cottages as a prize for thrifty workmen who have saved money: or the run of a cow on a farm, as in Northumberland, and other parts, will be found equally advantageous, and more practicable for the farmers in some cases. But this cannot so well be done where grass land is scarce.

6. A co-operative farm for the labourers. This would be a great advantage for the farmers as well as the men, if only to regulate wages, and to retain the best labourers. It would require a little care in starting it, and the men should be selected for having saved a few pounds. At Assington, in Suffolk, the amount of three pounds without interest was successfully worked, but great personal care was exercised. The two farms there have entirely succeeded: and it is proposed to start one or two in Herefordshire and elsewhere next year.

7. Migration and emigration. This is greatly required in some of the southern counties, but farmers and landlords should be careful to retain the best men by attaching them, in some of the above