The Wanganui Herald. [PUBLISHED DAILY.] MONDAY, JULY 24, 1911. BRITISH PEASANTRY.

Wanganui Herald, Volume XXXXVI, Issue 13435, 24 July 1911, Page 4

The Wanganui Herald. [PUBLISHED DAILY.] MONDAY, JULY 24, 1911. BRITISH PEASANTRY.

Since the census returns have been published in Great Britain there has been much written in the Press regarding the decay of the rural population, which is considered by many to bo nothing short of a national tragedy. Decreases in rural population are marked all over the Kingdom, and a frequent cause assigned is the increasing number of those who are migrating to other lands. The results are in certain aspects most ; depressing and discouraging. The burden of the tale is decrease, and in many cases the decrease is very great, amounting to a large fraction of the population. In very few rural districts in Scotland has there been an increase in populataion, hut where it has occurred in each instance this desirable state of affairs is attributed to improvements having been made to buildings by pnoprietora, and the erection of cottages and increase of small holdings. Although emigration is given as the chief reason for this rural depopulation, there appears to be a deeper cause. No doubt the prospects opening out to workers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and other new lands would, in any case, attract many, hut to this is added the diminution of crofts and little farms, the absorption of small holdings, the consequent destruction of humble roofs which sheltered in their time many brave and kind hearts, and the emigration of people to freer and kinder lands. The loss to the nation is simply regarded as deplorable, though of course it has its compensating advantages from the colonial standpoint. All at Horae are,,agreed that the blood and brain arc going, leaving the old, the disheartened, and the Impoverished. The results of the Small Holdings Act are proving disappointing. The lot of the peasantry in Britain is as hard a life ns civilised men live. Long hours of unremitting toil, with poor and precarious returns, have to he homo from one year’s end to another, and although it has its compensations in independence, it does not appeal to town-bred artisans or casual labourers. Few are prepared to undertake the hardness of the peasant life. They have no tradition binding them to it, and when the population is depleted of those who were bred and born in the same old homes, it is difficult to fill their places. Much was expected from the Small Holdings Act, but the results cannot be regarded as altogether satisfactory. The country districts are not becoming poorer, nor is the soil becoming exhausted, but it is a fact that although landlords have momentarily silenced the cry of the monopolist by their evident eagerness to sell, and land is freely offered, very little is being taken up, and small holdings are mysteriously disappearing. And it is now beginning to be realised that if anything practical is to he done for the revival of a. peasantry in Britain, hard facta must be faced. ‘The attractions of town life are great all the world over, and the Scotch and English peasantry are no exception to the rule in succumbing to the town hunger. The outlook of an insipid life, with small prospects of success, naturally leads to thoughts of emigration, a cause of depopulation which cannot be removed by legislation. The outlook at Horae is not regarded as good enough by the small farmer, when contrasted with the reasonable prospects ahead of him across the seas. The farm labourer has found now ambitions, fired by the success of his friends and companions in new lands, and the conditions acceptable to his forefathers, even though improved in many ways, no longer find favour in his eyes. The question of reviving the peasantry is agitating the minds of British writers and politicians, hut many difficulties are found in the way. The gradual stream of emigrants is leaving blanks which arc not being filled, and it is considered that an artificial stimulus will be needed if anything is to bo done. One writer remarks: “The deplorable fact is that the vast majority of Englishmen are becoming mere hirelings, thinking of work and its returns exclusively in terms of wages. There is no material for a peasantry in men whoso ideal is a minimum wag© of thirty shillings a week and a right to be set to work by an employer. We are become a nation of wage-earners. The hireling may he an excellent fellow in his way, and a valuable member of an industrial community, but a hireling he is, and there is nothing farther removed from a peasant.” France, it is pointed out, thinks the maintenance of the peasantry its first concern, a thing to be achieved • at any cost. Tradition in this instance helps, for the French rural poulation has never been parted from tho land. Another writer says; “Men will not go on tho land, to maake their living out of it, without a good deal of encouragement. They

will have to he relieved of direct taxation, 'or peasants are almost always short of money, and the payment of even a small sum without visible returns is a serious letcmut. They will need banking facilities of a kind that docs not exist in Britain. They will need markets near at hand, and therefore abundance of cheap transit for short distances. They will iced help to purchase, and easy terms of payment. Their instalments must go to buy the In ad for themselves and their Children. Above all, they must be made to feel that the country will support them and guard them against back-breaking competition. In a word, it is useless to think of establishing a poasaantry without the real and avowed adoption of a system of protection. It is not this or that fiscal measure that is required, hut the express leterminatiou to follow out a policy to its 'ttormost implications. That alouc pre:oives the peasantry of France, which coniid era high protective duties a reasonable price to pay for the maintenance of her peasantry. Nothing leas will serve for the more difficult tusk of creating a peasantry in Britain. Failing that, wealth must go in increasing and men decaying, and the country must manage as well as it can without a peasantry." Whether Britain will be prepared to pay the cost remains to be seen, but it is clearly evident that until there is some drastic change rural depopulation will continue, and the question of reviving the peasantry will remain unsolved.