s in der as rec

race i

acre in size, and they rented all the way from 6s. to 15s. per annum. These tracts, with their neat rows of growing vegetables and their trim hedges and tool-houses, looked very fine indeed. The rent included water and general care of hedges and paths. One holder, a whitesmith (tinsmith), when inquired of concerning the current prices of vegetables, said that he could not tell, for he never bought any. The difficulty with allotments seemed to be their distance from the houses. After After doing physical work all day, the strength

ride over the hard macadam roads between the trim hawthorn hedges; to see acres on acres of rich rolling meadow and field on field of "gare " land neatly drilled in turnips and potatoes; to see the stalwart, well-made men and women working in the fields, the splendid Clydesdale horses the favorite breed-before cultivator or plow, and to pass farmstead on farmstead with its rows of substantial stone cottages, its byre and fold and outbuildings, and its sugar-loaf stacks of straw; to see all these sights of thriftful

dred by 1 low, eva

active fe

ken of-t

ld ret

with

wo decades

and time consumed in getting to the allotment is no small matter. Still, there is usually a lad or a lass to help work the patch, and in the long North country summer evenings one can accomplish a great deal. All in all, in traveling through English towns it was the writer's observation that ""lotments," so far as they went, were not only good economy but good fun.

But to return to farmers and farming. To one who has the farmer's eye for good land and the farmer's passion for seeing things grow, there could be no country more satisfying than Northumberland, To

prosperity is to get the impression that the cultivation of the soil, even in the world's workshop, is still a paying industry. Here the signs of that historic depression in agriculture were not obtrusive, and the cry of the laborers that reaped the fields

was at least inaudible. The truth of the matter is that Northumberland does furnish the exception to most rules, and the country is generally conceded to be the best farm region in England-excepting possibly, the southernmost counties of Scotland, the best in the Kingdom.

The farms were, most of them, large ones, there being very few holdings of less

than one hundred acres, and many running well into the thousands. The writer was surprised to see how many of the large tenant farmers were "independent gentlemen," who, perhaps, had a hobby for horse or cattle or sheep breeding, but who, though they conducted their farms on scientific principles, seemed to be farmers from choice rather than necessity.

But there was another and larger class of tenant farmers in Northumberland who seemed to make ordinary farming pay. The premises of these men were not quite so ornamental as were those of the others, but there was that about them which betokened thrift and comfort.

A Northumbrian farmstead is very picturesque. Letting one's eye range the country, one sees the landscape dotted here and there with groups of gray stone buildings, their red-tiled roofs making a pretty contrast to the green of the fields and the blue of the sky. From each cluster of buildings there towers a tall smokestack, usually of brick, which marks the site of the farmer's boiler and engine room. The engines run from twelve to thirty horse-power, and are used for threshing grain and cutting feed. As to the buildings, there is the farmer's house-a commodious, two-and-a-half-story structure, built, perhaps, rather for utility than beauty, but still, with its ivy or roseclad entry and its geometrically perfect box-fringed walk and flower garden in front, not unbeautiful. The farm-house is frequently on the opposite side of the highroad from the other buildings of the farmstead. Then there are the hinds' cottages-one story buildings, constructed of the gray sandstone common to the region, laid in smooth rubble, neatly quoined. These cottages are built double, or, more often, put up in rows, as many as fifteen or twenty being sometimes in one range, which, with the little yards in front, give the appearance of a city street in the midst of green fields. About Alnwick they usual ly have the Percy crescent sculptured upon

the lintel of the door.

To look into the cottages is to be convinced that the Northumbrian farm laborer, compared with some other laborers, is pretty well off. The women seemed tidy housekeepers, despite the fact that so much of their time was spent in the fields. The cottages contained two and sometimes even

four rooms. The windows were smartly curtained, the floor, of stone flagging or cement, was freshly sanded, and the open, wrought-iron fireplace, with its kettle on the crane and its box oven, was kept blackened as only the thorough housewife knows how to do. Upon the walls would be, perhaps, scenes of hunting, made when the art of chromo-lithography was young; or a picture of Robert Burns at the plow, garlanded by the muse of poetry, and, without fail, a "jubilee" picture of Queen Victoria. In many cots the living-room was also a sleeping-room; but this fact has not the significance it has in a city tenement. The bedstead was of brass or iron, and the bed-linen was white and clean. The cottagers were very hospitable, and one need only be a stranger to be asked into their houses. To be an American was a special passport.

Besides the cottages, there are, upon a well-conducted Northumbrian farmstead, the dairy, the barn proper (the structure where cattle are housed is the "byre"), the sheepfold, the cart-sheds, the afore mentioned byre and engine-room, and various houses for roots and vegetables. There is often a large corrugated-iron canopy for the shelter of hay. But much of the straw and hay is put up in the peculiar sugar-loaf stacks, carefully thatched and bound with ropes of braided straw.

As has been said, the farms were given principally to the raising of live-stockcattle and sheep. When there was a surplus of milk over what was requisite to rear calves, it was disposed of in one of its forms. The wool from the sheep was a regular by-product, as also the grains wheat, rye, oats, barley, called, after the ancient usage, "" corn. But the chief products were the beef and the mutton, and the market was the local one of Newcastle and neighborhood. Immense quantities of turnips of several varieties were raised to feed the stock, and the four-crop shift was in general use. In the last quarter-century so much land has been laid down that only a fifth or a sixth of the area of the farms was in cultivated crops.

The farmers were an intelligent lot of

men.

In the science and method of prac

tical agriculture they were well up to date, and they could converse as interestedly about the Transvaal or the Philippines as about their more immediate concerns.

af be

houses

al passpor

Cottages, the

Northumb

arm prote

housed is

he carestes

and e

or roots

large

lter of

ris put

ks, care

es of br

the fam

ising of

one.

But the writer thinks he is not wrong in saying that they lacked that bolder, more restless spirit so characteristic of American farmers. They took life much more easily than American farmers, and did not work themselves nor their men so hard. Most of them had relatives "out" in the Western States of America or provinces of Canada.

In matters of politics they were rather inclined to take the Conservative side not from policy, but from conviction. The landlord might shoot and hunt and live in state in London and pocket the rents to meet which they must manage so closely; but this was right, for he should do as he pleased with his own. The landlord was to remain ever a (( gentleman," and they were to remain ever-farmers. Of course this attitude was also the politic Things go hard with the farmer who antagonizes his landlord or the landlord's agent. Recent legislation has done much to define the rights of the tenant in matters of tenure, improvements, growing crops, and the like, but much has to be taken for granted, and in the event of dispute the advantage lies clearly with the owner of the land. The farmer knows that as long as he keeps the good will of the lord of the manor and makes the

lord's interests his own, his tenure is practically secure and in all small matters he may have his own way. Many a man was working the land that his father worked before him. The rents of course varied. Ordinary farm land ran from twenty shillings to thirty shillings per acre, and leases were renewed from year to year.

The tenant paid all the rates. The English farmer with his wife jogging to town in his two-wheeled trap behind the diminutive pony is the representative of a class—a class just a little lower than that of those from whom he hires his land, and a little higher than that of those he hires to till his land. There are, to be sure, intermediate gradations, for in England they are used to making nice distinctions. The agent might be said to occupy a stage in the scale between that of the farmer and his landlord; and the farmer's steward, and on large farms his shepherd and byreman, would take care to maintain social precedence over the laborers. But the lines were less punctiliously drawn in the North than elsewhere.

And a word about those same men and women that till the land. They are to be seen everywhere. In the cultivation of the large fields of turnips they work in com

Verse 2

panies under a foreman, and one will see hoeing out the drills in a field, sometimes, a score of men and women, each attending to one drill and all proceeding across the field in a single steady rank. The sight may at first suggest unpleasant memories of plantation methods in the South before the war, but there is really no hardship in this way of working. It is merely an application of the economics that obtain in other industries to that of farming, and it is surely as pleasant for the workers as a more haphazard way would be. The only hardship might be the pace; but the testimony was that it was an easy one. In the hay-fields the women worked as expeditiously as the men. Many a fine lass handling the hay with her fork had a fig ure and a complexion such as more privileged sisters in the town might well envy. The women wore short skirts, aprons, and kerchiefs about the neck, and the Northumbrian women had a peculiar, round, wide-rimmed, black straw hat, which, with the rest of their costume, gave them the appearance of the wives of Shem, Ham, and Japheth in the toy Noah's arks. Aye," said a North-country laborer, "a wommun doos better thaan a mon at all steady wark, such as weedin' an' hoein' an' thinnin'. They're queecker an' they're moor faithful."

66

The women seldom got more than twenty pence per day of ten hours when hiring out by the day; but bondagers received thirty pence in harvest.

The men must, of course, be conversant with all the farm processes, the handling of horses, and the use of tools. They worked only nine hours per day. There was only custom to fix this period, but it seemed to be universal. The hind would get out at a little before six in the morning, catch his horses, throw the harness on them, and give them a feed of grain. After getting a snack of breakfast, he would hitch to plow or cart and work till eight, when a warm breakfast was sent out to him from the cottage. The breakfast took a half-hour, after which he and his horses set to and worked until half

A very average estimate would make the wage £62 per year, or $310, which, considering the lower prices in England, would easily equal $400. Adding the wages of the wife and other working members of the family, when there are such, it will be seen that the circumstances of the Northumbrian farm laborer are not so straitened as those of many of the world's workers. Hours are easy, there is no lost time as with town laborers, and there is often a pension in old age. When the writer was in the region, there was a considerable number of peasants from the west coast of Ireland traveling about the country in squads, and doing piece-work to pay their rent at home. They worked from dawn till dark, weeding turnips, etc., and they lived upon bread and tea.

Notwithstanding the relative prosperity of agricultural laborers in Northumberland, the "rural exodus" still goes on there as elsewhere. The decrease of farming in England (due chiefly to the relentless competition of such countries as America, Russia, Australia, Argentina, but also to the inaccessibility of land), and an age-long series of injustices against the agricultural laborer, will account for the decrease in the number of such labor

ers.

dinner and a long rest until two. Four more hours of work, from two till six, finished the day. The hours were kept as punctually as in a cotton-mill. The labor ers had no organization, as they have in

to his employer as the hind upon the farm, were seemingly at the bottom of the matter. There are leavens at work in society more potent than the laws of the market or the

desire to be "well fixed."