“Well, they do take the bread out of the poor men’s mouths; for you see at harvest time a poor man counts on getting the money to put something on his back and feet. It’s all a man with a family can do to buy bread and pay his rent with what he gets a week; but farmers don’t like to use machines, and don’t do it when they can get men. There’s very little difference in the expense, and I always will believe that a man with a head on his shoulders can do his work cleaner and better than a great iron thing with a lot of teeth and wheels.”
“Machinery is now made use of for almost every purpose,” said Fortescue; “but I had no idea the population was so thin in the country.”
“Ah, but it is miserably thin. If we go on as we have been within the few last years our ‘bold peasantry,’ as they’ve been termed, will disappear altogether, and I’ll tell ’ee why. There’s fresh commons enclosed and bits of waste lands constantly taken into cultivation, arable lands increases every year, but the population don’t; it drops behind. The young men go to London to be mechanics, or to market towns to learn trades, or to Australiay or Californee to mek fortins—heaven help ’em—and the girls go to service. You can’t get girls to field work now, or if you do by chance she comes with a big hoop on, as if she was agoin’ to a party. Ugh! I like to see a field wench as she ought to be—in a smock and leather gaiters, not dressed like a milliner, and moppin’ and poppin’ about as gay as the first lady in the land.”
“Oh, certainly, that’s right enough,” said Fortescue, “but the question is whether it is to the advantage of women to go to field work?”
“I dunno as it is,” said Ashbrook, drily. “It meks ’em dirty, and their homes dirty, and their children are left all day to themselves, and their clothes be soon spoilt. The little they do get is fetched out of the foire like.”
Fortescue affected to be deeply interested in the subject. He asked question after question, and Ashbrook replied with oration after oration, for he was never tired of discussing upon farming matters, and was an oracle in his own particular way.
He little thought, however, where his companion’s thoughts were wandering all the while.
“A man must have his head screwed on in the right way to be a successful farmer,” observed Fortescue, thinking thereby to please his companion.
“You’re right, it does—there beant any mistake about that. Many pipple think any fool is fit for a farmer, but they are deucedly mistaken though, and so many of them find out arter they ha’ tried their hands at the business.”
“But after all it’s a healthy pleasant sort of life.”