ELEVATIONS OF HOUSES, IN BRADFORD STREET, BIRMINGHAM.
12.—Examination of the Rev. Thomas Whateley, Cookham, Berks, on Cottage Allotments, and the keeping of Pigs by Cottagers.
It appears that a great part of the land of your parish is common, and that a portion of the population borders upon the common. What is the state of that population as compared with that which is too far removed from the commons to enjoy any of their privileges?—The persons who live in the immediate neighbourhood of the commons are evidently much poorer than those who live at a distance.
To what do you attribute this?—I attribute it to their depending upon a precarious and uncertain income; and I am sure, from all the observation I have been able to make, that a poor man’s best subsistence will always depend upon constant work and good wages, and that he never works for so bad a master as when he works for himself. And all employments, such as attending sheep, geese, &c., besides the precarious nature of the return made by them, usually impair his habits of steady and patient industry, and frequently give him a turn for poaching and pilfering, and engender other irregular and demoralizing habits.
But may not the children of the cottager, while he is engaged in steady and patient industry, be usefully and profitably employed in taking care of a pig or geese on the common?—No. The reason which applies against the father doing so, namely, the bad desultory habits engendered, applies with greater force against the children doing so. If they are old enough to be able to attend to these things, they are usually old enough to be employed in some rural occupation for which wages would be earned. Many mistakes are prevalent with respect to the profits from keeping cows, sheep, geese, pigs, &c., for I do not believe that any of these are really profitable; and though I am glad to see a pig as an appendage to a cottage (if the cottager’s employer has no reason to be sorry), because the pig serves as a sort of savings bank to the labourer; for if the labourer had not the animal, he would not put by, and out of his reach, from day to day, the money which the pig costs him in fatting; yet it is notorious that a labouring man pays more dearly for his bacon than he would do if he purchased it ready prepared to his hand.[[54]] Nor would he be the better clothed or cheaper shod if he took the operation of the Manchester weaver or the Nottingham shoemaker into his own hands.
But may not a labourer attend to the management of pigs or cows after the hours of work?—I think not, because a good labourer usually works by the great, and has done as much as his strength will allow when he returns home; and because nothing is gained by feeding cattle upon commons, where the cattle have nothing else to depend upon. The very worst master a poor man can work for is himself.
You say that the reason which applies against the father attending to pigs, geese, &c., on commons, applies equally against the children being so, i. e., the idle habits engendered; and that if they are old enough to be able to attend to these things, they are usually old enough to be employed in some rural occupation, for which wages would be earned. Now would not the children be employed by farmers in the same sort of labour, namely, in looking after cattle; and if so, why is it that the care of cattle on the common for the other is worse or more demoralizing than the care of the same sort of things for the farmer?—I conceive that I have answered this question before. If a farmer sends his pigs or other cattle into open fields or commons, and requires the assistance of a child to watch them, they are turned out only for a change, but are never in this part of the country kept upon the commons.
Do you think allotments of land to the labourer beneficial; and if so, what quantity may be usefully occupied by him?—I do not think allotments of land to the poor beneficial. I had rather see the allotments gathered into one large one, a farm, and the labouring man employed at good wages, by a superintendent managing the whole at his own risk and for his own interest, in the share to which his undivided and greater attention and anxiety justly entitle him, that is, by a thriving farmer. The poor man must be a poor master, and he had better serve a rich one.
What do you believe would be the consequence of too large allotments of land being made to the labourers?—That the poor man could not cultivate it. The wealth of his employer is the poor man’s safeguard against want. I approve of the practice of a benevolent farmer in my parish, who is accustomed to give to his labourers a headland of his field as a bonus to industry. He says he will make it worth the while of his labourers to be honest and diligent towards him, by letting them feel that they will have a suitable return from him. If what are called “ample allotments” are given, it appears to me to be a sort of wholesale almsgiving, attended with more than the usual mischiefs attendant upon most almsgiving. The orchard and garden before me might, if cut up into allotments, serve for six families of young labourers. It may be all very well to say, “Take these, my good men, and be happy;” but when, in the progress of population, there arises four times six families to be fed from the same soil, where will then be the happiness of the allotments? What, I submit, are small farms but ample allotments, and what, when stripped of romance, is found by experience to be the superior condition and power of production of the small farmers? Are they not, even where they farm their own lands, almost universally failing (like the small manufacturers against the large ones) in competition before the more scientific management, economy of labour, and more powerful application of capital of the large farmer. What is all Ireland but a country of cottage allotments; and what is there in that theatre of disorder and wretchedness that should induce the benevolent (or those who may have in their eyes the immediate temptation of Irish rents) to make trial of any such system in England? Are the cottiers who possess the fee-simple, the small freeholders of Ireland, in a superior condition by virtue of their allotments?—Many of the promoters of allotments doubtless intend well, and act upon the evidence of immediate benefits and satisfaction derived from them; so, probably, did the original promoters of the bread-money, scales, and the allowance system, labour rates, and the train of corrupting palliatives?