demand at its hands the blood of its young children destroyed body and soul by this agricultural gang system.
But before I proceed to unfold the evils which have followed in the wake of scientific improvement, let me record one benefit which has proceeded from it. It has vastly improved the health of the district. Malaria and other similar diseases which constantly lurked in the watery atmosphere have been banished, and the Fens, with one alarming exception, stand high in the Registrar-General's report.
But the very cause which has brought about this one advantage, the bringing of so much land under tillage, has led to evils of such magnitude as far to counterbalance this solitary good.
These enormous tracts of land require constant labour to keep them well cultivated. The soil is so prolific that the weeds would soon choke everything else if they were not vigorously kept in check. The farms are generally very large, and run a long way into the fen. As a. rule, there are no cottages upon them, and they therefore depend almost entirely for their labour on the native supply in the various villages, which lie on the highways, or rather, below them. The want of house-room naturally prevents any influx from other parts of the country, and the consequence is, that for about eight months in the year, every available woman and child is pressed into service.
As this kind of labour has been found to be more effectual under direction and in concert, and as, moreover, it is not always wanted to the same extent, a system has arisen whereby a man, called a gang-master, contracts to supply labour when and where it was wanted. He is generally of the class called "catch-work labourers," that is, a man who prefers jobbing to regular employment. He makes it his business to collect a number of women, young persons, and children, sometimes as many as forty, and form them into a gang, which he leads out day by day to those parts of the fen where he has engaged to work.
This system commenced in the Lincolnshire fens about forty years ago, the natural offspring, as I have said, of the great improvements science had there made.
It went on for a whole generation demoralizing the people. At last, in 1865-66, a Commission was appointed, and the evils it
