Farming Under Free Trade

I have reoently liad occasion to be moving about in the agricultural distrlcts of Lincolnshire, aml I am inclined to think that nobodycould do that witli eyes and ears open without and again stopping to ask himself,"What is going to be the end of all this?" "Just look around tlils nelghborhood," said a partlcularly well-lnformed resident In the country. "Over yonder, at such and such a village, is an unoccupied f:irm of 700 acres; over yonder is another of 600 acres; and a little further oft is anotber of perbaps 200 acres, which bas attacbed to it 400 or 500 acres elsewhere. At another village"- mentionlng the name of it - "a farm of 400 or 500 acres lies vacant, another of 300 or 400, and another of 400 acres. All these are on one estáte. Tbere is another estáte lylng away yonder in another directlon wblcb has unoccupied farms of a total extent of about 2,100 acres, and anotber of 600 acres;" and so the speaker proceeded with the list which apparently he could have continued alinost indefinitely. Not, he was cureful to understand, that the land was going out of cultivation, but that farmers were giving it up, and the great landowners were themselves cultivating It under the management of bailiffo. One very general effect of this is to reduce the nuniber of hands empioyed upon the land, and, as a rule, büilifi'í are harder tasktnastcrs than farmeis. Moreover, as the number of employers diminisbes the independence of the labore diminishes also. A man has a smaller cboice of maaters, and Is more eompletely under the tbumbof any one wlio will give hiui work. If under 8ucb circumstances wages do not tend downward it 3 partly because they stand at a point at which it is scarcely possible for men to exiut at all ata lower rate, and partly because tbere is a continual depletion of the country into the towns Throughout the country of Lincoln wages, as a rule, stand at 12 shilling a week. There are sorae exceptional cases In which they are less, and there are cases in which they are a trille more, but 12 shillings a week appears to be the usual rate of pay, nominally. The real pay Is sometbing less, because, whenever the weather does not permit of tbeir working In the fíelds, and nothing can be found to do indoors, 2 shillings a day is stopped, and of course it often happens that work is not to be bad in any weatber. "I assure you, sir," said one dapper little woniaii, with a round rosy face and a pair of laughinggray eyes that seem to g!ve the contradiction to all her statement oftrouble and anxiety - "I assure you, sir, my ole man many a week in the winter ha' made on'y 8 or 10 shillings u week, and its the winter time as you seems to want it the most." You may bear any number of such ditties In almost any village of Lincolushire - which, I suppose, U not conspicuously worse than any other agricultural country. All being wcll, however, tho people make L5 or so at harvest, and this muy be taken to make up losses at other times, so that 12 shillings may be taken, perhaps, fairly to represent the weekly wajiL'S of agricultural laborera. House rent may, perhaps, be rekoned at 18 pence a week, and we have ten and sixpence for the keep of a man and wlfe and I'ainily in food, lire, clothing, schooling and rates. "Only a little while ago I paid a üghtiujï rate of one-and-fivepence ha'pcnny," said atliln, barraseed-looking woraan with whom I sat and talked over family truubles, "and since then I paid one-andeleven-pence ha'penny for a highway rate, and now Mr. Duvis tells me there' another on 'em rates signed. Yes, sir, they be lialf-yearly ratea, but they've managed to get tliree on 'em into the twelve moatha. I Junno 'ow they does t. They works ii oop somehow." This poor woman looked to be almost broken down witli trouble. Owlng toan injury to his toot, I thlnk slio said, her husband had lost the benefit of harvest time the season before last. They had got behlnd witli their rent to the extent of L2, but they struggled hard to clear it oft by starviug and pinchiug, and after long delay slie thought she 8uw lier way to tiiko the landlord 10 shlllings on the coming Saturday, and tlien she and lier husband liad been talking it over. The very next day, to her honor, she went into lier cottage and found a stranger aeateil In one of her chairs. The broker was in, and nothing but absolute ruin and the shelter of the dreaded woikhouse was before them and their Uvo or tliree youüg children. They were spoken of in the villuge as quite models of industry and sobiiety and thorough respectabihty in every way; and, happily, a frlend carne forwaid and voluntecrud to help them. But thougli the greater part of a year had elnpsuii, the mere rtcollectlon oí that terrible approximation to the workhouse ngitated the poor womiwi most distressingly. And well ie tuigtit, for lu April last year lier luisband did only twodays' work in tbree weeks. IL tbat should happen again In the present April 1 They might be again at the workhouse door; and who knows that they might tiud a frlenn another time. On 12 shillingg a week a small family can just manage to cxist when tbings go smoothly. Hut it is scarcely possible for them to make the least provisión for any sort of trouble, and a slight accident or a brief illness, or a short period out of work, and they get bebind to an extent wbicb is reully ruinous. Thus, with the great mass of these Inboring poor, lite is one prolonged agony of dreud and anxiety. Their wbole careers are overshadowed by the wurkhouse, against whlch they can m;ike no provisión, limvever cnreful und industrious they may be. I tulked with one woman who had four childreu too young toearn a penny. Her husband eurned two shilling a day. For that he had to set out at half-past 6 in In the morniiig, walk two miles, work till 0 o'clock In the evening and wnlk two miles back agnin. This woman was two and sixpence in arrears with her hlghway rate and wae in dreadful trouble about it, and tliere was another rate for Iigliting, one and ten-pence hti'penny, also overdue, "and they comes down on you as if you'd got L3 or L4 a week," she said. Out of their 12 shilllngs a week - f uil wage8 - they paid at the rate of about one and sevenpence for rent and sixpence for schooline, so that for food and clothing, and light Rod lire, the six of them bad somethiug uuder ten shilllngs for the seven duys. It was, Indeed, pltlful to thlnk of this unfortuuate uiun - a kindly, affectlonate father he appeared ty all account, eioing hig best to aatisfy the appetites of bis children and trudging off with scanty clothlug and empty stomach for nearly twelve hours labor in all weathers, depressed with certain knowledge thatbetween liis family and the workhouse stood nothing but bis own fiail Ufe and bodlly strengtti. These yillage homes are often the most Insanitary little places, but tbey look wonderfully peaceful and pretty with tbelr little forecourt gardens, tbeir windows full of flowers, their red-brlck floors, their well-polished furniture, thelr old fashioned ornaments, their sunnlness and airiness and general aspect of peace and siinpllcity and leisure. It really seems to be alinost an ideal life that these people might lead, and to the denizen of a great city, with its toil and atrife, lts ceaseless drive and rush and din and turmoil, t seems un the faca of tbings strange that these plcturesqus villagers are not gay er of heart and brighter in spirit than they appear to be. Why should they be so sad and dull and anxious? Alas! alas! sit down there in the sunshlne that Is streamlng in by the open door and flooding the thicket of geraniums in the front window- sit down and draw out the people's confidence a little, and you soon understand it all, their struggles and privations, and thelr fears and anxieties, that plot out the sunshine, and makc the very breeze whlsper of coming troublcs. But it will be said that these tbings used to be even worse than they are now. Welt, yes; possibly they were. But there is another fact that strikes you with great force even here and there as you move about a Lincolnshlre village. There are signs that the Influence of a cheap press and of general education are being feit everywhere. All the great storms of our social and industrial life in cities send waves of influence sweeping through these vlllages and hamlets in a way they have never done before. All the brighter and more iutelligent of their population liave some knowledge of what is going on In the world. A "divine dlscontent'1 is one of the outcomes of the forces of the times; and while the larger of the farmers are giving up fannlng, be cause, with the landowners on tlielr backs, they cannot nmke faruiing pay, yonng laborins; men of spirit are trooping oft the land to try their luck in towns or in the Colonies. I must not be understood to be speaking for the whole of Liincolnshire, but certainly in some of the district into whieb I have been one cannot but stop now and again to ask himsclf. What is going to be the end of it all ■. The democratie papers are very loud in their assertion that "a tariff is a t;ix," but when asked to prove their assertion they invariably wilt. Ever}' line in a newspaper costa soinething. If it is for the benefit of an individual it should be paid for. If a grocer was asked to dónate groceries to one abundantly able to pay for them he would refuse. The proprietor of a newspaper must pay for free advertising f the bene; ficiary does not, and yet it Is one of thé hardest things to be learned by many people that a newspaper has space in tg columns to rent, and must rent it to live. To give away or rent It for anythlng less than living rates would be as certainly fatal as for a landlord to furnish house rent free. Why don't the Argus, and the Adrián Press, and the Detroit Free Press, and their kindred bring out their roosters and crow ? There has been a great democratie victory ! A largely increased majority ! Alabaraa has made a clean sweep for the democracy! There will not be a republican in her next legislature! It is a wonderful victory ! It is an uatonishlng result ! Why don't tliese papers flap their wings and crow over it? Why do they condense the returns f rom Alabama in a small paragraph and place it in an out of-the-way position ? Is it possible that they are not proud of It? Do they feel even a slight blush mantle to their cheeks when they read those returns, and know how such unanimous results were secured ? If Michigan, or Minnesota, or any northern state should be carried by the democracy, even by a slight majority, would they not use all the cuts ana seare unes possible to think of 1 The Adnan Press used three or four columns of cuts last spring in rcjoiclnjr over the guln of a few city officials and supervisors in Lenawee county. Here is a great state gone almost unanimously democratie, with scarcely a republlcan vote placed In a ballot box in the whole state ! Should it not cali forth a torrent of huzzas? Why don't you shout ?