Pauperization: cause and cure/Landlords and labourers
LANDLORDS AND LABOURERS.
Much has been written and said on the condition of the unskilled agricultural labourer, his wants and his vacancies, his prospects and his drawbacks. His position has been represented on the one hand as hopeless and helpless, on the other hand it has been practically shown that his lot is in many respects more eligible than that of the town workman. Meanwhile though governments with expensive commissions, and individuals with knowledge more or less imperfect, seem to have exhausted the subject, the condition of the rural labourer, especially in parts of the south and west of England, is yet an unsolved problem.
Since in these set of questions we are nothing unless practical, it should be stated that the suggestions here put forward are founded on what has been practically done by individual and especially landlord influence in a certain agricultural district where wages are not high, and where Pauperism, audits natural concomitants of misery, improvidence, and degradation, were once rampant. Moreover since, under institutions and customs generally similar, we have now two totally different states of things existing (as in Northumberland and Devonshire), it would appear a practical undertaking to endeavour to raise up the standard of the worst by the standard of the better.
Some fundamental facts must not be lost sight of in the consideration of such a subject, because they will be found, after all that can be said and done, to have an influence for good and evil respectively. Such are, for instance, Race, Soil, and the presence of mines and manufactures.
First, as to Race or natural constitution of people which, after the lapse of centuries, can still be distinctly perceived in different counties, and that without any very great ethnological acumen. There is the Saxon, or Anglo-Saxon of the south, and the Anglo-Celt of the west; there is the Danish nationality of the northern counties, and the Gaelic Celt of the Highlands and of Ireland, differing again distinctly from one another. And this distinction, which may be traced in habits, in religion, and even in conversation, has a bearing no doubt upon condition; the Welsh waggoner will sometimes stop to argue about religion, and the Yorkshire ploughboy turn to a discussion of horseflesh; the Irish cottier will be garrulous about his potatoes and his family, while the plodding Anglo-Saxon of the south will be eloquent about want of work and wages, and the union workhouse. It is with this Anglo-Saxon of the south that we are now chiefly concerned; and on this point one rather bold observation has been made, which a practical diagnosis of the country seems partly to bear out; namely, that the line of the Trent nearly divides the prosperous from the ill-conditioned quà agricultural labourers, who being, as it were, at the base of the social polity, are most liable to the effects of what may be called natural causes.
Then as to soil, it will be found that where the soil is rich, the farms large, and the farmers men of capital, the position of the agricultural labourer will be better on the whole than where with small farms and struggling tenants, as in the south-west of England, the labourer is only employed for a few months in the year, and cast adrift to his own resources or the cold comfort of the Poor Law in winter. It is affirmed that in many parts of Hampshire, Berkshire, and Devonshire, agricultural labourers who for eight months in the year have steadily worked for the surrounding farmers, are during many weeks or even months inmates of the workhouse; or in what will be found an almost equally degraded condition, regular recipients of out-door relief every winter. This is supplementation of wages with a vengeance; this is a state of things that cannot but call for the most profound sympathy, and if it were not for practical demonstration of its unnecessity, for the most profound despair. Then as to the accidental presence of mines and manufactures in a county or district; it will generally be found that by supplying work, and so absorbing almost on the spot the surplus labour, and in a lesser degree by raising the wages and the value of agricultural produce thereby in the neighbourhood, the condition of the labourer is improved. The presence of mines and manufactures in the north may be contrasted with their general absence in the south.
But in addition to these more fundamental and less alterable causes, there are local and incidental reasons which perhaps in an equal or even greater degree affect the condition of the agricultural labourer; and seeing that there is no insuperable difficulty to their correction in any and every district in England, it is to them that more especial attention should be directed—they are chiefly these: A badly-administered Poor Law, aggravated by that pest of the poor man's home, a superfluity of beer-shops; a want of intelligent and improving landlords, and an absence of all means of investment for the labourers' savings.
The question of a better administration of the Poor Law, which, in some districts, seems to cause the very evils of improvidence and dependence it should seek to cure, would take too long adequately to go into here, more especially as some of the incidents of the southern counties of England seem almost beyond the power of Poor Law to deal with. It would seem as if labour were in excess, and that migration is the only cure. If the farmers habitually turn off their men in the winter, and there is no work for them, although, during the summer months they are required, it may be that migration must naturally correct the overplus, and machinery supply its place. This would have two effects, which the farmers, landlords, and others, should well consider. First, wages would rise, which would possibly be no loss to any one, as it has been often shown that the lowest paid labour is not always the cheapest; but secondly, the beat men would be the first to migrate. This would soon be felt as a serious and palpable loss in a district, as has practically been found in more than one previously overstocked neighbourhood. But as to the administration of the Poor Law, it may be mentioned that in the district in a west midland county, the practical treatment of which forms the basis of these suggestions, pauperism once extensive, amounting to 6 or 7 per cent., is now, by a judicious administration, reduced to the lowest in England, namely, ½ per cent., while some neighbouring unions, under similar conditions, are hardly reduced at all from their normal level under the old Poor Law of 6 per cent. The chief features of this administration have been great individual supervision, a strict system of out-door relief, considerable regard to sanitary conditions, and generally an attempt to encourage provident habits, and to correct the communistic feeling of the old Poor Law by thrift. As regards the demoralizing influence of the beer-shop, legislation will no doubt shortly give to the magistrates, or some local authority, larger powers than the emasculated measure of 1869, One mode of legislation, not yet much considered, would be to raise the rating qualifications, which would at a stroke do away witlx many of the lower class of beer-shops. But in towns, in neighbourhoods where the beer-shops and public-houses amount to about one for every twenty or thirty grown-up males—not a very unusual proportion—it is evident that either the beer-shop keepers or some of the twenty or thirty men must, financially or morally, be ruined; and every inducement, legitimate or other, will be brought into play to prevent the financial ruin of the beer-shop, especially when temptation is so easy, and resistance so hard. This beer-shop and licensing difficulty is the natural result of the Beer Act, an instance of legislation by theory: what was then called free-trade in beer has turned out to be free-trade in vice, and vice, too, now with a vested interest acquired by law. But when actually under the guise of thrift and providence, that is, for the monthly or weekly meetings of a benefit club, labouring men assemble at the beer- shops, the landlord of which is the manager of the society, it is difficult for the most providently disposed to resist the insidious snare; and seeing that the friendly society, properly constituted, may ultimately be shown to be one chief correction and cure for the low condition of the labourer, you hereby have demoralization and improvidence introduced under the very guise of thrift—the fountain poisoned at its spring. The beer-shop and the benefit society, their antithesis and their confusion, are subjects for the legislator, as difficult as they are important.
But in the face of these adverse causes, fundamental and incidental, let us see what individualism, quâ landlords, can do notwithstanding. Much every way, by residence, by intelligent sympathy, and practical knowledge:—Thus (1.) Cottages and gardens; (2.) Land; (3.) Work; and substitute clubs for beer-shops, economic outlay for charitable doles, and thrift and self-respect for improvidence and dependence. It will not cost much in money, but it will require time and some personal sympathy and supervision. None other can do what a landlord can, neither clergyman nor constable, schoolmaster nor Government; and it is gradually being discovered that among some debased town populations, the relation of landlord and tenant (not by cash-nexus but by sympathy and kindly interest) is the greatest leverage and renovation for some of the poorer classes.
(1.) Cottages and gardens. It will at once be urged that cottages don't pay—nor do they merely as buildings, but what if a large garden be added of half an acre with fruit trees, which may be worth 3l. or 4l. beside the dwelling? If a new cottage can be built for about 100l., and with using materials on an estate (such as timber and stone) a two bedroom cottage can generally be built for about that sum, with a garden of half an acre, it might fairly be let for 5l. or even 6l.; deduct from 6l.; 15s. per annum for the value of the land, and 5s. per annum for the value of fruit trees planted, and you have a return of 5l. per annum for the outlay of 100l., or 5 per cent. Where two or three cottages are built together, they might be put up for less, or one extra bedroom thrown in for the same sum. If half the garden be planted with thirty or forty fruit trees (apples or damsons) it will almost pay the rent of the whole. Good fruit trees, after a few years, may be worth from 2s. to 3s. per annum. The labour to be expended on the garden obtained, as it will be at odd hours snatched, perhaps, from the public-house, need not be reckoned in this calculation.
In the case of an old cottage the return would not be so clear, since the rent of the cottage, as it stands, must be deducted; but in these cases it will generally be found that the cottage has been run up by some former tenant, and even here by the addition of a garden or allotment, a return of 3 per cent, might be obtained on a new cottage. The money can be advanced by some of the land improvement companies at about 6 per cent, repayable in twenty-five years; and though a landlord might not be able suddenly to rebuild a number of cottages out of income, he will not find the interest on the money in excess of the return of rent so heavy as to debar him from gradually improving all on his estate; and against this is to be placed the elevation of the labourer, and the economic necessity of their being housed for the cultivation of the land. There is involved here, however, a slightly complicated economic question. The landlord of farms is obliged necessarily to provide cottages for the labourers on the farm as much as buildings for the farmer. That they must then be looked on practically as part of the landlord's outlay on the farm. When let, as they generally are, at non-remunerative prices, they are actually let in supplementation or part payment of wages; but in such an arrangement an injustice is done to the other owners of cottages, and yet more to the tenants in the neighbourhood, namely, those built independently of any farm ownership. This ought not, strictly speaking, to be; a cottage should be made to pay a fair rent, and the mode in which the difficulty is here sought to be solved is, by the garden or allotment system, which is easier to the large landlord than to the smaller cottage speculator.
(2.) Land.—A great deal that is fallacious and absurd has been written chiefly by theorists and closet agriculturists, about peasant proprietorships, and "la petite culture;" for any one with practical knowledge of the subject is aware that the cottier or petty farmer endeavouring to live on his small place of ten or twenty acres is too often a warning and example to all who would set at defiance the practical facts of rural economy. It is a deplorable sight to witness a hard-working, industrious labourer, who has saved a little money, endeavour thus to carry on a life of struggle and rags, by depending entirely on the resources of la petite culture; but under all this fallacy is a germ of truth, thus applicable: If a landlord will allot to a few of his cottages at first (or later to as many as half or more) a few acres of grass land, say from three to five, enough to keep a cow or two, making always a previous condition that the cottager shall have saved a few pounds, he will find that the incitement to obtain these small privileges will act most beneficially as an inducement to saving money upon the whole population. He will find, if careful in the selection of his tenants, that no greater natural means of raising the agricultural labourer is to be found than the granting of these small plots of land. It is at once an investment and a source of income to the cottager, and that at no very great outlay by the landlord; but these two conditions must be always peremptorily observed. First, the cottager must have previously saved by his own exertions a few pounds, say 10l. or 20l., else ruin and failure will ensue through the accidental loss of a cow, and the absence of previously formed habits of thrift. Secondly, the land must be let to agricultural day labourers, not to petty farmers who design to live or rather starve on the place; the profits are then made by the wife without interfering with the weekly wages of the labourer. As much as 10l. yearly net profit may be made in this way from the possession of one cow, and it is impossible to reckon the amount of self-respect and self-reliance thereby superinduced.
(3.) Work.—Without going as far as Hampshire or Berkshire or Devonshire, there are few agricultural districts where work is not slack in winter as compared with the summer. Some day machinery may come to compensate the vacuum; but meanwhile there is a very simple way in which landlords may, on the strictest economic principles, do much to afford relief. There is hardly a parish or an estate in England where draining, road-making, and other permanent improvements are not, more or less, urgently required, and it is in winter that such works may be best undertaken. If landlords would take the trouble, either by borrowing money or more cheaply out of income, to push forward such works in their several neighbourhoods, very timely relief might be afforded in those cases where labourers are employed only during the summer months, and heartlessly thrown on the rates in the winter. If it would be an argument or inducement in the case, it might be known that the amount of money spent in rate? could be saved to the ratepayers, but that is a narrow view of the whole question, that ought to be beneath the consideration of men in the position of English landlords.
The great secret of raising the poor is somehow to teach them self-reliance and thrift. If, by reducing the temptation to the beershop, encouraging sound friendly societies, and making opportunities for investment of savings as a landlord can, the lesson and example of thrift is taught, and a premium put on providence; and at the same time, by a strictly-administered Poor Law a discount and a penalty set on improvidence, the agricultural labourer, and equally the town poor, will be taught, as it were contagiously, habits of self-reliance and self-respect. We must give men some outlook and hope, some means of investment and natural savings bank if we would wean them from the beer-shop, and make them independent of the fatal communism of the Poor Law. On the estate in question no cottager is taken till he can produce evidence of money saved, if it be only a few shillings, as a test of providence; and if he then continues to save money, he has the knowledge and inducement that he will be eligible for a cottage with land on the first vacancy. In addition to this there is a clothing club established, and in sickness or sudden distress such assistance as medicines or strengthening food, or clothing are given, but only to the members of the club, thus instituing another and more inclusive provident test.
The systematic application of these principles, namely, inculcating and promoting providence and self-reliance among the poor, has been found during forty years' experience to be attended with the very best results in the district in question. Those who too ignorantly assert that there is no prospect for the agricultural labourer but the workhouse, might be surprised to find in this district labourers at 11s. per week in the possession of 50l. or 100l. in the savings bank. It is hardly necessary to say that such families are quite beyond the reach of pauperism, indeed a pauper is unknown on the estate. Nor is there any prudential check such as is insisted on by Mr. Stuart Mill, nor yet any natural check to longevity—rather the contrary; the death-rate being less than 14 per 1000; large families and old age are the rule not the exception, and the one supports the other.
By sympathy and supervision, not by direct gifts, a beneficial relation has been promoted between rich and poor not uncommon to many country districts, but rarer in towns—and pauperism has been virtually exterminated. There are no demoralizing charities and few beer-shops—five beer-shops on the estate having been converted into cottages. Little or no money is ever given, but considerable sums have been spent in building cottages, and in draining and other improvements; and some such work is continually going on in the neighbourhood during the winter.
Under different conditions, in some respects under greater difficulties, these same principles may be, because have been, applied to town populations and the work carried out so successfully by Miss Octavia Hill in the relation of a landlord in the worst and poorest districts of Marylebone, where whole courts and alleys have been converted from squalid misery into decent comfortable houses, and the money invested has returned a steady interest of 5 per cent, besides a large surplus for repairs and improvements—shows what results are attainable if the intelligence and active sympathy of Individualism be brought to bear upon this otherwise complicated problem.