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AGRICULTURAL LABOUR.

have joined together to start a co-operative farm for the labourers, the farmers themselves offering to take up the shares to help the men to start it, allowing the labourers to buy them out by degrees as they acquired capital. This is rather a different story to what reaches us from Oxfordshire and Warwickshire.

Now as regards the concession of land for a cow to labourers (which many philanthropic men seem never to have heard as yet), I have letters of evidence from correspondents in many counties of England showing the advantage of such an arrangement; but it ought not generally to be more than an exceptional privilege, granted on the proof of money actually saved by the labourer. If one quarter or one-third of the cottages in a district were gradually allowed the privilege as a prize, practical experience, including the testimony of many farmers, shows it is advantageous; but considerable care should be used in selection.

Instances will be found recorded in the Report of the Agricultural Commission in Derbyshire, Cheshire and Shropshire, in Lincolnshire, Northumberland and Yorkshire and elsewhere, of such a system, if it may be so called, for in many parts it appears to be entirely unknown. The advantage of it is that the wife attends to the cow, and does almost all the labour required, leaving the man to attend to his daily work. Out of six of my own farm labourers four have a few acres of grass and keep a cow, and have done so for years; there never has been the slightest difficulty in their wishing to be at home when they were wanted by me, and their nett profit from the cow will be equal to five shillings or six shillings a week at least. The same system obtains in these other places, and the results are thus recorded by eye-witnesses.

A.—On the Duke of Rutland's estate in Nottinghamshire, a tenant farmer says: "It is quite re-