Where Men Decay; A Survey of Present Rural Conditions (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: very rarely that county papers are made the vehicle of complaint. Each village consumes its own smoke. Yet the air is full of murmurings, and about Lady Day and Michaelmas awkward questions have a way of cropping up in the columns of the local Press. Always, however, in a general form. Some light might be thrown upon the question, "Why are the labourers leaving the land?" by an inquiry into the circumstances under which a particular parish has been depleted. But to apply the inductive method would offend agricultural subscribers. So the conundrum is propounded as primd facie inexplicable. Why do they? Wages are better than they were. Cottages not much worse. Schooling is free. Churches are admirably kept up. The employers are the finest race of yeomen the world can show. That men should leave a healthy occupation, endeared to them by hereditary association and pursued among picturesque surroundings, for the vice and squalor of a town, seems rather like an epidemic infatuation than the result of sober and individual choice. Readers, please explain. Suggestions pour in. "Give them an interest in the scientific side of their work," writes a clerical dignitary. Reading rooms have their advocates. Allotments are extolled. Parish councils were the panacea of five years ago, but they are already as a tale that is told. I heard the other day, from one of his parishioners, of a vicar who gave it as his opinion that the discontent of the agricultural labouring poor was owing to their eating too much meat. This was at any rate an attempt to get to the bottom of the matter. Diagnosis should precedetreatment. No particular view, however, seems to command anything like general assent. Nothing is done, and the exodus goes steadily on. No cottager willingly rears a son to the plough. A coun...