VII.
The Kentish Waggoner.
(Golden Hours, 1872.)
Each county or district seems to afford the student of agricultural life in England a different problem. Here in Kent we have the labourer and his family all earning high wages; from one end of the year to the other there is plenty of work for husband, wife, and children; they are rich as farm labourers go; and yet, when the time of trial comes, they are no better off than their brethren in less favoured parts of the land. When they are sick they go to the parish, when they are old they come to the workhouse.
The solution of the problem is not far to seek. The Kentish agricultural labourer shares a delusion common enough in every class of society, that there is some wonderful talismanic power in the mere possession of the coin of the realm, which will bring a man all he really needs. This is an article in the world's creed, believed in everywhere, and by all classes of men, but nowhere with such unhesitating faith as in the country. Nay, to be wise in this particular, practical men allow that the young should learn betimes such arts as may enable them to become more clever at money-making; but to waste time in learning how to spend their money when they have got it is mere folly, since they are convinced that every one knows that art only too well already.
"Enlighten," said a Kentish farmer, "a labourer reasonably, but don't let it be only book-learning. A boy that is going to be a clerk is learning how to live when he is at school, but one that is to be a farm labourer is learning what is a luxury to him. It all depends upon a boy's growth when he is able to do work. A little chap of eight, or even less, may be useful."
In this the labourer and his master will be found of one mind. He Is not unwilling to send his children to school if you can only show him that they can earn more money by it. But if his boy can get a day's work rook-scaring, the few pence he thus earns far outweighs all the problematical advantages of a day's schooling.
It is this contempt for learning, unless it can be rapidly turned into money, which causes the agricultural labourer in Kent, notwithstanding good wages and plenty of work, to remain at the same dead level as his less prosperous countrymen. The people here, as elsewhere, are destroyed for lack of knowledge.
If we trace the life of one of these Kentish labourers, we shall see how thoroughly his material interests and those of his family are sacrificed to this faith in that apparently wise saw, Ne sutor ultra crepidam. Let us take as a type one of the better class, a waggoner, a man, we will suppose, with every advantage in character, health, and regular employment.
Commencing life by a moderately regular attendance at the national school up to seven or eight, he is, as we have seen, soon made useful as a little scarecrow. After he has been employed in odd jobs off and on for a year or two, he is entrusted with an old gun or a pistol, with which he amuses himself popping at the birds. From November till May, Sundays included, he follows this monotonous employment, unless perchance his father should volunteer to do duty for him that he may go to the Sunday School. What a vacuity of mind must result from standing about day after day in the same fields, surrounded by the same objects—objects, too, concerning which the poor lad knows nothing save their outward shapes; and such wearisome, protracted labour undergone at this tender age stunts the body as well as the mind.
If, however, he is a waggoner's son, he will soon get more congenial employment as a "mate." For a waggoner's son is carter-bred, and as used to horses as to his brothers and sisters. The atmosphere of his home is redolent of the stable. The horses are the one object of thought, of talk, and of interest to father, mother, and children. Speak to a waggoner about his team, and you have won his heart; ask the poor worn-out mother about her husband's horses, and her face will brighten up, and in the midst of her cares and hard work, she will find time to dilate on the merits of Captain, of Violet, or of Jerry. Visit them when the day's work is over, and the whole family are gathered round the hearth, and the never-failing topic of conversation will be the horses.
As a babe, the first words he lisps are the names of the horses. Does he cry—he is taken to see "Prince," or lifted up to pat "Diamond." He no sooner learns to walk than he finds his way to the stable, toddling with the rest of the family after "dadda," as he spends hour after hour cleaning and baiting his charge. Thus, from earliest infancy, he is receiving a technical education; he hears of nothing, thinks of nothing, talks of nothing but of that one business by which he is to live; the stable becomes playroom and schoolroom combined; all his ideas centre in it and gather round it; and when in due course he becomes a mate, he displays at once an inborn and inbred faculty for managing horses.
And the life thus commenced continues with unvarying regularity to the end of the chapter. Once a mate, he has to be up at five o'clock in the morning; his work is not over until ten at night, and during every hour of the day, except when he himself is eating, he is with the horses, either in the field or the stable.
Of course such hours are outrageously long, and would indeed be insupportable if it were not for the society of the horses. Efforts have been made to shorten a mate's daily work, and in one place it is reported that by an arrangement of staying longer one day, and coming later the next, the hours are reduced to twelve!
Moreover, under this system, all about the boy are as ignorant as himself. Whether he lodges with his father, or the waggoner with whom he works, it is about the same as far as his stock of ideas is concerned. From all parts of Kent, even from employers themselves, comes the same tale. One employer says, "I have not a well-educated labourer, male or female. They may some of them be able to read after a fashion, but there is not one of them that writes well enough for a stranger, unused to them, to read off (what they have written) at first sight."
A lady who takes much interest in "waggoners' mates," says, "Many, if not all, have been to school, but have forgotten nearly all they learnt. They have generally lost all desire to improve themselves. I know seven men in one hamlet who cannot read."
A clergyman at East Church speaks of "the heavy, overworked, weary young men, who scarcely know their alphabet."
The only possible means of preserving the little knowledge they have is to be found in the evening school. But such a school rarely prospers in a purely agricultural district, simply because those for whom it is intended are too tired to come to it. After a long and perhaps wet day's work, it is not in human nature to quit the warm fireside and the family supper to goad the poor bedulled intellect into tiresome effort. Warmth, indeed, may sometimes attract a poor lad, who cannot get much of it at home. "Let me sit by the fire, and I'll do a jolly good sum, and no mistake about it," said one such boy to a friend of mine, a teacher in a Kent night-school.
While these schools can never supply the place of regular and daily instruction, they may and do keep alive the desire for better things. My friend quoted above sometimes enlivens his lessons by reading a little tale, and finds those most acceptable which describe a higher state of society than that to which the boys are accustomed.
"I wish I was a gentleman," said one boy.
"What would you do?" he was asked.
"Sit in front of the fire and eat bull's-eyes," he replied.
There is another occupation which stands much in the way of the young waggoner becoming a very zealous attendant at the evening school. He may forget his letters, but he never forgets the art of love-making. He finds that he can soon earn what to him seems a good bit of money, and his thoughts naturally turn to settling in life as his fathers did before him. I cannot say whether he goes about it in the same business-like way that they did.
"Ich will put on my best white sloppe,
And Ich will wear my yellow hose;
And on my head a good grey hat,
And in't Ich sticke a lovely rose.
Wherefore cease off, make no delay,
And if you'll love me, love me now,
Or els Ich zeeke zome oder where,—
For Ich cannot come every day to woo."
With a certain prospect of getting a living as long as health lasts—and as he never has ache nor pain, he is scarcely likely to trouble himself much with this consideration—he does not wait to save enough to buy furniture or even clothes, but as soon as he has man's wages he takes his lass to church, and launches on the troubled sea of matrimony.
Two rooms in a small row content him, and there is always some benevolent broker willing to supply the necessary furniture. Then as to clothes, his credit is good here also. Every one knows him, and that he is not likely to run away just as he has taken to himself a wife. Our young waggoner is so ignorant that he cannot be expected to look beyond his nose in this or in any other particular unconnected with the management of horses. His duties to a possible posterity, or to society through them, are considerations quite beyond his "tether;" all he knows is that he will be more comfortable. And who can blame him if the description given a few years ago of the domestic comfort he enjoyed when lodged on a farm still be true? An essay by the Rev. E. O. Hammond, of Sundridge, addressed to the Sittingbourne Agricultural Association in 1856, thus describes his lodging:—
"He returns home after a long day spent in the service of his master, generally fatigued, often wet since the morning. Here and there, but not generally, there is a fire accessible, where he may restore his frozen circulation, and do something at least towards drying his wearing apparel. When a little comfortable, he may take a candle and amuse himself according to his taste. Ordinarily there is no fire and no light for the farm servant when the toil of the day is done. If there is a fire for his use he must light it himself, or if candles, he must either buy them or economise his stable allowance of five for two nights. Not unfrequently he will sacrifice his supper to go straight to bed, on which, having first deposited his boots to prevent them from freezing, he ensconces his person between a pair of sheets that defy all the colours of the rainbow for a hue that will match them. The stench of the chamber is intolerable in many cases, and no wonder, under the occupation of stable and labour-stained men and clothes, the men varying in number from three or four to nine or ten in a room on very large farms, and sleeping in most cases two in a bed."
A Kent woman is no more accustomed to idleness than her husband; so, yoked together, they enter the mill, and commence to tread the weary round, hoping for nothing better than permission to tread it to the end of their days. The good man has now to be up every day in the year between three and four o'clock in the morning. At six he comes home to breakfast, and not only must this be ready, but by eight all the work in the house done, for then the wife too must turn out and do her share of outdoor labour.
For in Kent, with its hop-gardens, its cherry-orchards, and its market-grounds, there is always plenty of work for a waggoner's wife all the year round. In the early part of the year there is pole-shaving, pole-butting, and dibbling beans. Then comes couching or weeding, thistle-spudding, hop-tying, and thinning the mangolds. With summer-time comes fruit-packing. Then Kent is seen in its glory. AH the cherry-orchards are full of active, merry groups, some oh ladders, some laden with baskets, all busy and hard at work. Then comes harvesting, followed quickly by the great work of the year, when every one—mother, sisters, brothers, and even the baby—all go out from morning till night into the hop-gardens, and pick as much as their fingers can At last the circling seasons end with duller work—picking up potatoes, couching amongst the sown wheat, and pulling up mangolds and turnips.
Thus a Kentish wife is pretty well occupied, and she only stays away from the field when absolutely obliged to do so. For it is an understood thing that she and her children are to give their labour to the farmer whenever he needs it. Cottages, when they are on the master's land, are sometimes let subject to this arrangement, so that any objection on the part of the woman would lead to the eviction of the family. But they do not object. On the contrary, they seem rather to like it.
"I think," says one, "it is quite right. Women ought to go and do women's work, and help their husbands, and not stay at home. I have taken my daughters out at six years old, hop-tying. When I was eight years old I tied three acres myself. They would give me a dinner every day that I should keep up. I was very quick at it. Now I can't do so much, but I and my daughters tied five acres this year. I go to ladder-tying too." Only she did not think she was fairly paid. "I go and do more than a man would, and yet they give a shilling instead of half a crown."
Thus the money flows in from all sources, the family purse gets replenished, and should the father continue in good employ and have no serious illness they may be said to do moderately well.
The ordinary wages of a Kentish waggoner are about fourteen shillings a week. A correspondent of the Field newspaper, an agriculturist in East Kent, in a letter which appeared in that paper this year,[1] says that in his locality, the Isle of Thanet, some farmers pay fifteen shillings a week, that he himself pays threepence an hour, and gives the average earnings of his men last year:—
| £ | s. | d. | |
| 46 weeks at 15s., or 3d. an hour | 34 | 10 | 0 |
| 1 week, hay-cutting | 1 | 4 | 0 |
| 5 weeks' harvesting | 9 | 0 | 0 |
| £ | 44 | 14 | 0 |
—which is nearly seventeen shillings a week all the year round for the father's earnings alone. In addition to this, the wife will earn from two shillings to half a crown a week, while the bigger children will be getting from three to seven shillings a week.
Food in an average family of half a dozen children will probably come to sixteen or seventeen shillings; for, working as they all do, from morning till night, it is necessary that they should live well. And this in fact is the great and beneficial result of Kentish agricultural economy. Supper is the social meal of the day; and the honest waggoner, when he sits down after all the toils of the day, comes to it with an appetite as capacious as the omnivorous giant Jack of bean-stalk fame had the honour of dining with. He will commence with a large beefsteak pudding, and finish up with a basin full of bread and milk or several cups of tea. As to the boys who work, each one rivals his father, the bigger one perhaps outdoing him altogether. As a result the men are stalwart, the women rubicund. There is a harmony in the appearance of both land and people. It is a well-nurtured land, and the people are a well-nurtured people. But here it ends. Ignorance, notwithstanding high wages and good living, robs them of all the higher benefits they might obtain from their prosperous circumstances, and renders them as truly dependent as are the rest of their class.
The great drawback of their lives is their unceasing, protracted labour, the compulsion put on their wives to turn out into the fields, and the temptation offered to make use at the very earliest age of the money-making power in the children.
Had they knowledge, they would find out that a little combination among themselves would soon shorten the hours of labour without lessening the wages. So too they would see clearly that a wife's services at home are worth vastly more than she can earn abroad, especially if there is a young family. Had they knowledge, they would never dream of putting forth such an excuse for their negligence as this:—I can't read, and yet I can earn my living; my father couldn't read, and yet he could earn his living: what good will book-learning do my son? Why, as Farmer Jones says, "It will spoil him and make a fool of him."
This ignorance not only works to oppress the poor waggoner, but also to oppress the ratepayers. If a man was well educated, if he had read a few books that had nothing whatever to do with his daily toil, he would feel' it a disgrace and a degradation to ask for charity when he had the whole world open before him in which to earn a living. Such a man must utterly break down under the combined influence of sickness and poverty before he could ever descend to apply for parish relief.
But the Kentish waggoner has been educated under the "mind your own business" system, and knows of only two alternatives,—to work in his native fields, or live at the expense of his native parish. The agricultural labourer's position is an anomaly in the nineteenth century; it is a relic of feudalism minus all its advantages. He has been taught that his own position is that of the serf who tills the land; to want more education will only unfit him for his post. "I am content," he argues; "I will do my duty to the land, but when I can't work then the land must do its duty to me."
He has not risen out of serfdom, and the doctrine that he is to learn nothing but what will fit him to follow the plough will keep him there for ever. If so, we may expect an ever-increasing pauperism. Even now parish relief is his anchor of refuge. The club is convenient in its way, but would never maintain itself if it were not held at the " Red Lion," and brought weekly visions of foaming pewter pots, and long clay pipes, and roaring songs, and loud thumping of delighted hob-nails. But he knows it has an ugly habit off casting off the older members, so he does not trust it, but drifts on to his last refuge, the Union workhouse.
Here he comes at last, his fine physique shattered by rheumatism, his hair silvered, his cheek still ruddy as a russet apple; but power of work nearly gone, he is glad to break a few stones on the road, or, when feebler still, to do odd jobs in the Union grounds, and to crawl about in the warm summer sun.
But life has become very sad —
"Bob, from his wife and children parted,
Droops in his prison, broken-hearted."
His "old woman," sent to dwell in a different part of the house, soon breaks up; while the Union is so far from his home, that his children come rarely to see him, and gradually forget their aged father, until one day they receive a summons to remove the body. Then they go, and with some lamentations and some slight twinges of conscience, bring the old waggoner back again to the spot which gave him birth, and bury him—
"Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap;
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep."
- ↑ 1872.