Grain and Chaff from an English Manor

by Arthur Herbert Savory

The labourer in the days of which I am writing was inclined to be suspicious of savings banks and deposit accounts at a banker's; his savings represented a vast amount of hard work and self-denial; and he looked askance at security other than an old stocking or a teapot. He had heard of banks breaking, and felt uncomfortable about them. A story was current in my neighbourhood of a Warwickshire bank in difficulties, where a run was in progress. A van appeared, from which many heavy sacks were carried into the bank, in the presence of the crowd waiting outside to draw out their money. Some of the sacks were seen to be open, and apparently full of sovereigns; confidence was restored, and the run ceased. Later, when all danger was over, it transpired that these supposed resources were fictitious, for the open sacks contained only corn with a thin layer of gold on the top.

Formerly it was said of a certain street in Evesham, chiefly inhabited by market-gardeners and their labourers, that the houses contained more gold than both the banks in the town, and I have no doubt that, even at the present day, there is an immense amount of hoarded money in country places. Only a short while ago, long after the commencement of the Great War, the sale of a small property took place in my neighbourhood, when the purchaser paid down in gold a sum of £600, the bulk of which had earned no interest during the years of collection. No doubt people, as a rule, in these days of war bonds and certificates, have a better idea of investment, but probably a vast sum in possible loans has been lost to the Government through want of previous information on the subject. It should have been a simple matter, during the last fifty years of compulsory education, to teach the rudiments of finance in the elementary schools, and I commend the matter as worth the consideration of educational enthusiasts.

The labourer's attitude, as I have said, is suspicious towards lawyers. I was chatting with a man, specially taken on for harvest, who expressed doubts of them; he continued, "If anybody were to leave me a matter of fifty pounds or so, I'd freely give it 'em," meaning that by the time all charges were paid he would not expect more than a trifle, because he supposed stamps and duties to be a part of the lawyer's remuneration, and that very little would be left when all was paid.

I was once discussing farming matters with a labourer when prospects were looking very black, and ended by saying that I expected soon to be in the workhouse. "Ah, sir," said he, "I wish I were no nearer the workhouse nor you be!" It should not be forgotten that the agricultural labourer's financial horizon does not extend much beyond the next pay night, and were it not for the generosity of his neighbours—for the poor are exceedingly good to each other in times of stress—a few weeks' illness or unemployment, especially where the children are too young to earn anything, may find him at the end of his resources.

Almost the first time I went to Evesham, in passing Chipping Norton Junction—now Kingham—three or four men on the platform, in charge of the police, attracted my attention. I was told that they were rioters, guilty of a breach of the peace in connection with the National Agricultural Labourers' Union, then under the leadership of Joseph Arch. Being so close to my new neighbourhood, where I was just beginning farming, the incident was somewhat of a shock. Arch undoubtedly was the chief instrument in raising the agricultural labourer's wages to the extent of two or three shillings a week, and the increase was justified, as every necessity was dear at the time, owing to the great activity of trade towards the end of the sixties. The farmers resisted the rise only because, already in the early seventies, the flood of American competition in corn-growing was reducing values of our own produce; and as all manufactured goods which the farmer required had largely increased in price, he did not see his way to incur a higher labour bill.

Arch sent a messenger to me a few years later, to ask permission to hold a meeting in Aldington in one of my meadows. I saw at once that opposition would only stimulate antagonism, and consented. The meeting was held, but only a few labourers attended, and no farmers, and agitation, so far as we were concerned, died down. One or two of my men were, I think, members of the Union, but having already obtained the increased wages there was nothing more to be gained for themselves by so continuing, and they soon dropped out of the list. Eventually the organization collapsed. Arch was a labourer himself, and exceedingly clever at "laying" hedges, or "pleaching," as it is still called, and was called by Shakespeare in Much Ado About Nothing:

"Bid her steal into the pleached bower,
Where honeysuckles, ripen'd by the sun,
Forbid the sun to enter."

Pleaching is a method of reducing and renovating an overgrown hedge by which all old and exhausted wood is cut out, leaving live vertical stakes at intervals, and winding the young stuff in and out of them in basket-making fashion, after notching it at the base to allow of bending it down without breakage. Arch was a native of Warwickshire, the home of this art; it takes a skilled man to ensure a good result, but when well done an excellent hedge is produced after two or three years' growth. The quickset or whitethorn (May) makes the strongest and most impervious hedge, and it flourishes amazingly on the stiff clay soils of the Lias formation in that county and its neighbour Worcestershire.

I have often wondered at, and admired, the labourer's resignation and fortitude in adversity; a discontented or surly face is rarely seen among them; they have, like most people, to live lives of self-sacrifice, frugality, and industry, which doubtless bring their own compensation, for the exercise and habit of these very virtues tend to the cheerfulness and courage which never give up. Possibly, too, the open-air life, the vitalizing sunshine, the sound sleep, and the regularity of the routine, endows them with an enviable power of enjoyment of what some would consider trifles. After a long day out of doors in the natural beauty of the country, who shall say that the labourer's appetite for his evening meal, his pipe of tobacco beside his bright fireside, and his detachment from the outside world, do not afford him as great or greater enjoyment than the elaborate luxury of the millionaire, with his innumerable distractions and responsibilities?

The labourer has, as I have said, little appreciation of the invisible or what does not appeal strongly to his senses; he cannot understand, for instance, that a small bag of chemical fertilizer, in the form of a grey, inoffensive powder, can contain as great a potentiality for the nutrition of crops as a cartload of evil-smelling material from the farmyard; nor is he aware that, in the case of the latter, he has to load and unload 90 pounds or thereabouts of worthless water in every 100 pounds with which he deals. Possibly, however, his preference for the natural fertilizer is not wholly misplaced, for there is, no doubt, much still to be learned concerning the relative values of natural and artificial compounds with special reference to the bacterial inoculation of the soil and its influence on vegetable life.