ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LIFE.

Clutha Leader, Volume XXI, Issue 1041, 6 July 1894, Page 3

ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LIFE.

An English Assistant Commissioner, Mr Wilson Fox, hs\'s reported as to one of the districts of Lancashire. A summary of it may be given as follows : — Rents are very fairly well paid. No farms are unlet, and there is not the slightest difficulty in letting them ; in. fact", men ire usually forthcoming who will eagerly bid against each other, and in-many districts the land appears to be as well farmed as formerly. Probably the fact of the farms being comparatively small throughout the district, and thus requiring a moderate amount of capital, is one reason for this, the proximity of excellent markets another, and also the fact that the sons of the farmers have been brought up practically as labourers on their fathers' farms, and hence are unfit to follow any other occupation. Again, with reference to the condition of the land being taken as a test of agricultural depression, it must be remembered that the Lancashire farmer is a working farmer. He. and his wife, sous, and daughters work from early dawn to lato at night with an industry that, can but excite the admiration of those who witness it. In many cases where the. employment o£ less outdoor labour has been a necessity the land has not suffered, because the farmer and his sons have unade increased exertions, and if an indoor servant has had to be sent; away the wife and the daughters have undertaken the additional dairy work and household dnties. At the present time in some districts it is the farmers' sons and daughters who have suffered rather than the land, for they have been, and arp, giving their best energies towards its cultivation, receiving no reward in the present, and with but little prospect of any in the future. How far they will consent in the future to stop with their parents under such conditions remains to be seen. A few farmers told me that they give their sons and daughters wages, but that this is quit? the exception, and I believe, in the Great majority of cases, they are simply working for their food and clothes. A farmer on about 250 acres in the hill district gave me the following account of his own experience : ' Every farmer should put his children's wages by or else give- up the farm. I have to pay for labour, and others ought to do so, and not let their children suffer. When Thvas a lad I lived with my parents, and worked for them. J got courting a young woman, who was a- servant in a farm house, and one day I said to her, ' Wilt you marry me, lass V and she said ' Yes.' I went home to my mother and said, ' I'm bound to be wed.' Mother looked at me as ill had done some wrong, and was qwite upset with me. My father and mother told me they had no money to give me, as they saved nothing. I told mother I was bound to be wed, and that I must wed the lass. Well,. I told the lass I had no money, and what did she do but pull out a bank book and showed me sho had saved L2OO out of her wages. My mother was fairly capped when she heard this, for then the lass was too good for me ; but we were wed, Now, if my parents had saved my wages I should have had L 300.' I — — » :