Hodge and His Masters

by Richard Jefferies

Some dairies find a difficulty in disposing of the milk—they cannot find a purchaser. He has himself a considerable surplus over and above what the contract allows him to send. This must either be wasted entirely or made into butter and cheese. In order to make cheese, the plant, the tubs, vats, presses, and so on, must be kept in readiness, and there must be an experienced person to superintend the work. This person must be paid a salary, and lodge and board in the house, representing therefore a considerable outlay. The cheese, when made and sent to market, fluctuates of course in price: it may be as low as fourpence a pound wholesale; it may go as high as sixpence. Fourpence a pound wholesale will not pay for the making; sixpence will leave a profit; but of late the price has gone rather to the lower than the higher figure. A few years since, when the iron industries flourished, this kind of cheese had a good and ready sale, and there was a profit belonging to it; but since the iron trade has been in so depressed a condition this cheese has sold badly. The surplus milk consequently brings no profit, and is only made into cheese because it shall not be wasted, and in the hope that possibly a favourable turn of the cheese market may happen. Neither the summer cheese nor the summer milk is bringing him in a fortune.

Meantime the hay is spoiling in the fields. But a few years ago, when agricultural prices were inflated, and men's minds were full of confidence, he recollects seeing standing grass crops sold by auction for 5l. the acre, and in some cases even higher prices were realised. This year similar auctions of standing grass crops hardly realised 30s. an acre, and in some instances a purchaser could not be found even at that price. The difference in the value of grass represented by these prices is very great.

He has no pigs to sell, because, for a long while past, he has had nothing upon which to feed them, the milk being sold. The pigsties are full of weeds; he can hardly fatten one for his own use, and has scarcely better facilities for keeping pigs than an agricultural labourer. The carriage of the milk to the station requires at least two quick horses, and perhaps more; one cannot do it twice a day, even with a very moderate load. The hard highway and the incessant work would soon knock a single horse up. The mowing machine and the horse-rake must be drawn by a similar horse, so that the dairy farm may be said to require a style of horse like that employed by omnibus proprietors. The acreage being limited, he can only keep a certain number of horses, and, therefore, has no room for a brood mare.

Farmer George is aware that nothing now pays like a brood cart mare with fair good luck. The colt born in April is often sold six months afterwards, in September, for 20l. or 25l., and even up to 30l., according to excellence. The value of cart-horse colts has risen greatly, and those who are fortunately able to maintain a brood mare have reaped the profit. But Mr. George, selling the milk, and keeping a whole stud of nags for the milk cart, the mowing machine, the horse-rake, and so forth, cannot maintain a brood mare as well. In the winter, it is true, the milk may sell for as high a price as tenpence per gallon of four quarts, but then he has a difficulty in procuring the quantity contracted for, and may perhaps have to buy of neighbours to keep up the precise supply.

His herd must also be managed for the purpose, and must be well fed, and he will probably have to buy food for them in addition to his hay. The nag horses, too, that draw the milk waggon, have to be fed during the winter, and are no slight expense. As for fattening a beast in a stall, with a view to take the prize at Christmas at the local show, he has abandoned that, finding that it costs more to bring the animal up to the condition required than he can afterwards sell it for. There is no profit in that. America presses upon him hard, too—as hard, or harder, than on the wheat-grower. Cases have been known of American cheese being sold in manufacturing towns as low as twopence per pound retail—given away by despairing competition.

How, then, is the dairyman to succeed when he cannot, positively cannot, make cheese to sell at less than fourpence per pound wholesale? Of course such instances are exceptional, but American cheese is usually sold a penny or more a pound below the English ordinary, and this cuts the ground from under the dairyman's feet; and the American cheese too is acquiring a reputation for richness, and, price for price, surpasses the English in quality. Some people who have long cherished a prejudice against the American have found, upon at last being induced to try the two, that the Canadian cheddar is actually superior to the English cheddar, the English selling at tenpence per pound and the Canadian at sevenpence.

Mr. George finds he pays a very high rent for his grass land—some 50s. per acre—and upon reckoning up the figures in his account-books heaves a sigh. His neighbours perchance may be making fortunes, though they tell quite a different tale, but he feels that he is not growing rich. The work is hard, or rather it is continuous. No one has to attend to his duties so regularly all the year round as the man who looks after cows. They cannot be left a single day from the 1st of January to the 31st of December. Nor is the social state of things altogether pleasant to reflect on. His sons and daughters have all left home; not one would stay and take to the dairy work. They have gone into the towns, and found more congenial employment there. He is himself growing in years. His wife, having once left off making cheese when the milk selling commenced, and having tasted the sweets of rest, is unwilling to return to that hard labour. When it is done he must pay some one to do it.

In every way ready money is going out of the house. Cash to pay the haymakers idling about in the sheds out of the rain; cash to pay the men who manage the milk; cash to pay the woman who makes the cheese out of the surplus milk; cash to pay the blacksmith for continually re-shoeing the milk cart nags and for mending machines; cash to pay the brewer and the butcher and the baker, neither of whom took a sovereign here when he was a lad, for his father ate his own bacon, brewed his own beer, and baked his own bread; cash to pay for the education of the cottagers' children; cash, a great deal of cash, to pay the landlord.

Mr. George, having had enough of his accounts, rises and goes to the window. A rain cloud sweeping along the distant hills has hidden them from sight, and the rack hurries overhead driven before the stormy wind. There comes a knock at the door. It is the collector calling the second time for the poor rates, which have grown heavier of late.

But, however delayed, the haymaking is finished at last, and by-and-by, when the leaves have fallen and the hunting commences, a good run drives away for the time at least the memory of so unpropitious a season. Then Mr. George some mild morning forms one of a little group of well-mounted farmers waiting at a quiet corner while the hounds draw a great wood. Two of them are men long past middle age, whose once tawny beards are grizzled, but who are still game, perhaps more so than the rising generation. The rest have followed them here, aware that these old hands know every inch of the country, and are certain to be in the right place. The spot is not far from the park wall, where the wood runs up into a wedge-shaped point, and ends in a low mound and hedge. Most of the company at the meet in the park have naturally cantered across the level sward, scattering the sheep as they go, and are now assembled along the side of the wood, near where a green 'drive' goes through it, and apparently gives direct access to the fields beyond. From thence they can see the huntsman in the wood occasionally, and trace the exact course the hounds are taking in their search.