The pressure of hard circumstances, the endless battle with poverty, render men and women both callous to others' feelings, and particularly strict to those over whom they possess unlimited authority. But the labourer must not be judged too harshly: there is a scale in these matters; a proportion as in everything else; an oath from him, and even a slap on the ear, is really the counterpart of the frown and emphasised words of a father in a more fortunate class of life; and the children do not feel it, or think it exceptionally cruel, as the children of a richer man would. Undoubtedly, however, it does lessen the bond between child and parent. There is little filial affection among these cottagers—how should there be? The boy is driven away from home as early as possible; the girl is made day by day to feel her fault in being a girl; to neither can the poor man give any small present, or any occasional treat. What love there is lasts longest between the mother and her daughter. The only way in which a labourer exhibits his affection is when another labourer in authority, as a carter, ill-treats his boy—a too common case—and then he speaks loudly, and very properly. But even in most serious matters there is a strange callousness. I have known instances in which a father, aware that a criminal assault has been attempted by another labourer upon a tender child of twelve, has refused to prosecute, and the brutal offender would have escaped without the slightest punishment had not the clergyman heard of the story.
The slow years roll by—they are indeed slow in an agricultural village—and the girl, now fifteen, has to go regularly to work in the fields; that is, if the family be not meantime largely increased. She has in this latter case plenty of work at home to assist her mother. Cottagers are not over-clean, but they are not wilfully dirty in their houses; and with a large family there is much washing and other domestic matters to attend to, which the mother, now fast growing feeble, cannot get through herself. In harvest the women get up at four or earlier, and do their household work before starting for the fields. But, perhaps, by this time another girl has grown up sufficiently to nurse baby, mind the young ones, and do slave's work generally. Then the elder daughter goes to the fields daily when there is work to be had. In arable districts the women do much work, picking couch grass—a tedious operation—and hoeing. They never or rarely milk now. In the dead of winter there is nothing for women to do. At this age—fifteen or sixteen—the girl perhaps goes out to service at some farmhouse. If she is fortunate enough to enter the house of one of the modern class of farmers, it is a lucky day for her when she begins indoor labour. It is to be feared that the life of a girl of this kind in the old time, and not so long ago, in the houses of the poorer order of farmers, was a rough one indeed. But much of that is past, never to return, and our business is with the present. Where they have a dairy she has to clean the buckets and milk-cans and other utensils, to help turn the cheeses, and assist the dairymaid (a most important personage this last) in all kinds of ways. The work is coarse and rude, but it only lasts a portion of the day, and she has regular and ample meals. The bacon and cheese soon begin to tell upon her. The angular bones disappear, the skinny arms grow round, and presently enormously fat—not much the prettier, perhaps, but far more pleasant to look at. Her face loses the pinched expression; her cheeks become full, and round, and rosy; in every way her physical frame improves. It is wonderful what a difference a few months in a good farmhouse makes to a girl of this kind. She soon begins to dress better, not from her wages, for these are small enough, and may commence as low as £4; but her mistress gives her many things, and, if she is a good girl, buys her a dress now and then; and with the shilling or two she asks in advance, she purchases cheap ornaments of the pedlar at the door. Her life is low enough socially—it is almost an annual round of working, eating, and sleeping (no one sleeps like a farm-wench); but it is an infinite improvement upon the struggle for existence at the cottage. She has no trouble, no thought, no care now. Her mistress may snap occasionally, her master may grumble, and the dairymaid may snarl; but there are no slaps on the ear, no kicks, no going to bed supperless. In summer she goes out in the afternoon haymaking as an extra hand, but only works a few hours, and it is really only a relaxation. She picks up some knowledge of cooking, learns how to make herself useful in the house, and in the course of a year or two, if moderately sharp, is capable of rising a degree, and obtaining a better salary as a maid-servant, having nothing to do with a dairy. The four or five pounds with which she commences may seem a very low sum, but the state of her domestic education at the time must be taken into consideration. She has to learn everything. All the years spent in working in the cottage at home have to be unlearnt—all the old habits replaced by new ones. After the first year or so her value rises considerably; she may continue in the house at a higher salary, or go into the town as maid-servant in a tradesman's family. A large proportion of servant-girls thus find their way from the country into the town. With these we have nothing further to do—they are no longer field-farers. A few after several years learn the art and mystery of butter and cheese, and become dairymaids; and then, if they are clever, earn good wages—indeed, fabulous prices are asked by them. There are not, however, so many dairymaids as formerly, for the small dairies are getting amalgamated and made into larger ones, and then the farmer, if he makes butter and cheese, employs a dairyman in preference. This rise to be maid-servant, or to be dairymaid, is the bright side of the girl's career. There are darker shades which must be mentioned.
The overcrowding in cottages leads to what may be called an indifference to decency. It is not that in families decency is wantonly and of a set purpose disregarded, but stern necessity leads to a coarseness and indelicacy which hardens the mind and deadens the natural modesty even of the best girls. Then the low scandals of the village talked over from cottage to cottage, the rude jokes of the hayfield, the general looseness and indifference which prevail as to morality, all prepare the girl for the too common fall. If she remains at home and works in the fields after the age of fifteen, unless uncommonly strong-minded, it is an open question whether she will or will not succumb. If she goes into a farmhouse as servant, the chances are in favour of her escaping temptation. But in farmhouses she may also sometimes run into the very jaws of danger. It is not uncommon in some districts for young labourers to sleep in the house, one or two who milk and have to be on the spot early. These take their supper in the kitchen or the brewhouse, and, despite the strictest precautions on the part of the mistress, enjoy plenty of opportunities for flirting with the girl. Young, full of animal spirits, giddy and ignorant, she thinks no harm of a romp, and finally falls, and has to leave her service. If a little may be said in favour of the poor girls, not a word can be said in favour of the agricultural men, who are immoral almost without exception, and will remain so until a better-educated generation with more self-respect arises. The number of poor girls, from fifteen to five-and-twenty, in agricultural parishes who have illegitimate offspring is extremely large, and is illustrated by the fact that, out of the marriages that take place—and agricultural poor are a marrying class—scarcely any occur until the condition of the girl is too manifest to be any longer concealed. Instances could be mentioned where the clergyman's wife, with a view to check the immorality around her, has offered a reward of a piece of furniture to the first married woman who does not bear a child till nine months after marriage; the custom being within three months. The frequency of the appeals to the petty sessions in rural districts for orders of contribution, by young unmarried girls, also illustrates the prevalent immorality. Of late the magistrates have taken the line of ordering contributions on a higher scale, on the grounds that the labourer earns larger wages, and that the cost of living has risen, and also as a check upon the men. This well-intentioned step has had the precisely opposite effect to what was wished. The labourer with higher wages feels the demand upon his pocket but very little more. The cost of living in rural outlying districts has risen only to a very trifling degree—barely perceptibly, in fact. Bread is cheap—that is the staple—rents are the same, and there are more allotments than ever, making vegetables more easy to obtain. The result, therefore, is this, that the girl feels she can sin with comparative immunity. She is almost sure to get her order (very few such appeals are refused); let this be supplemented with some aid from the parish, and she is none the worse off than before, for there is no prejudice against employing her in the fields. Should her fall take place with some young farmer's son from whom she may get a larger contribution in private, or by order of the magistrates, she is really and truly in a pecuniary sense better off than she was before, for she has a certain fixed income. The evil is aggravated by the new law, which enables the order to be extended over a longer term of years than formerly, so that for fifteen years is a common thing. If it is decided to recognise immorality, and to provide against the woman being unduly injured by it, then these orders are certainly the correct procedure; but if it is desired to suppress it, then they are a total failure. The girl who has had an illegitimate child is thought very little the worse of by her friends and her own class, especially if her seducer is a man who can afford to pay for it—that is the grand point. If she is fool enough to yield to a man who is badly off, she may be jeered at as a fool, but rarely reprimanded as a sinner, not even by her own mother. Such things are not looked upon by the rural poor as sins, but as accidents of their condition.
It is easy to be hard upon the poor girls, but consider their training. Many of them cannot read or write; how many even can sew well? The cottage girl is always a poor hand at her needle, and has to be taught by the elder servants when she first goes into her place. Accustomed from childhood to what would be considered abominable indecency in a higher class of life; constantly hearing phrases which it is impossible to allude to; running wild about the lanes and fields with stalwart young men coarser and ruder than those at home; seeing other girls none the worse off, and commiserated with rather than condemned, what wonder is it if the natural result takes place? The fairs have been credited with much of the mischief, and undoubtedly they are productive of evil; but if they were abolished, the average would in all probability remain about the same. The evil is inherent, and does not depend upon circumstances. It is the outcome of a long series of generations; it cannot be overcome in a decade. Education will do much, but not all. Youth is always led by the tone of the elder people. Until the tone of the parent is improved, the conduct of the young will remain much the same. The more distant a parish from a town, the more outlying and strictly agricultural, and therefore stagnant, the greater the immorality. It is the one blot upon the character of the agricultural poor. They are not thieves, they are not drunkards; if they do drink they are harmless, and it evaporates in shouting and slang. They are not riotous; but the immorality cannot be gainsaid. No specific cure for this state of things can be devised: it must slowly work itself out under the gradual pressure of an advancing social state. It will be slow; for, up to the present, the woman has had but a small share of the benefit that has befallen the labourer through higher wages. If higher wages mainly go for drink, the wife at home is not much the better. The women say themselves they are no better off.
If the girl at eighteen or twenty—in most agricultural marriages the girls are very young—is fortunate enough to have placed her faith in a man who redeems his word, then comes the difficulty of the cottage and the furniture to fill it. Cottages are often difficult to find, especially anywhere near a man's work, which is the great object. The furniture required is not much, but there must be some. The labourer does not deal much with the town furniture-dealer. A great deal of the furniture in cottages has been picked up at the sales of farmers on quitting their tenancies. Such are the old chairs, the formal sideboards and eight-day clocks standing in tall, square oaken cases by the staircase in the cottage. Such, too, are the great wooden bedsteads of oak or maple upstairs; and from the same source come the really good feather-beds and blankets. The women—especially the elder women—go to great trouble, and pinch themselves, to find a way of purchasing a good bed, and set no small pride upon it. These old oaken bedsteads, and sideboards, and chairs have perhaps been in the farmhouse for three or four generations, and are at last sold because the final representative of the family is imbued with modern ideas, and quits farming for trade. The cottagers always attend sales like this, and occasionally get hold of good bargains, and so it is that really good substantial furniture may often be found in the possession of the better class of labourers. The old people accumulate these things, and when their sons or daughters marry, can generally spare a few chairs, a bedstead and bed, and with a little crockery from other relations, and a few utensils bought in the adjacent town, the cottage is furnished sufficiently well for a couple whose habits are necessarily simple. After marriage the hard work of the woman's life really begins—work compared with which her early experience at home is nothing; and many, if they have left situations in farmhouses, deeply regret the change. The labourer can hardly be expected to feel the more exalted sentiments; and if in the upper classes even it is said that romance ends with marriage, it is doubly, literally true of the agricultural poor. In addition to her household work, she has to labour in the fields, or to wash—perhaps worse than the former alternative; and after a while her husband, too commonly wearying of his home, in which he finds nothing but a tired woman and troublesome children, leaves her for the public-house, and consumes two-thirds of their slender income in beer. The attachment of the woman for her husband lasts longer than that of the man for the woman. Even when he has become a confirmed drunkard, and her life with incessant labour has become a burden to her, she will struggle on, striving to get bread for the children and the rent for the landlord. She knows that as evening comes on, instead of sitting down to rest, her duty will be to go down to the public-house and wait till it pleases her lord and master to try to stagger home, and then to guide his clumsy steps to the threshold. Of course there are wives who become as bad as their husbands, who drink, or do worse, and neglect their homes, but they are the exception. As a rule, the woman, once married, does her best to keep her home together.
The wife of the labourer does not get her shins smashed with heavy kicks from hobnailed boots, such as the Lancashire ruffians administer; but, although serious wife-beating cases are infrequent, there are few women who escape an occasional blow from their husbands. Most of them get a moderate amount of thrashing in the course of their lives, and take it much as they take the hardships and poverty of their condition, as a necessity not to be escaped. The labourer is not downright brutal to his wife, but he certainly thinks he has a right to chastise her when she displeases him. Once in authority, the labourer is stern, hard, and inconsiderate of the feelings of others, and he is in authority in his own cottage. The wife has been accustomed to such treatment more or less from her childhood; she has been slapped and banged about at home, and therefore thinks comparatively little of a blow from her husband's hand. The man does not mean it so brutally as it appears to outsiders. This semi-wife-beating is only too prevalent.
Does the incessant labour undergone by an agricultural woman result in ill effects to her physical frame? The day-work in the fields, the haymaking, and such labour as is paid for by the day and not by the piece, cannot do any injury, for it is light, and the hours are short. In some districts the women do not come before half-past eight, and leave a little after four, and they have a long hour out for dinner. It is the piece-work of the corn-harvest that tries the frame, when work begins at sunrise or shortly after, and lasts till the latest twilight, and when it is work, real muscular strain. This cannot but leave its mark. Otherwise the field is not injurious to the woman so far as the labour is concerned, and the exposure is not so great as has been supposed, because women are scarcely ever expected to work in wet weather. The worst of the exposure is probably endured upon the arable fields in the bitter winds of spring; but this does not last very long. In what way field-labour is degrading to the women it is difficult to understand. The only work of a disgusting nature now performed by women is the beating of clots on pasture-land, and that is quickly over. After all, there is nothing so very dreadful in it. Stone-picking, couch-clearing, hoeing, haymaking, reaping, certainly none of these are in any way disgusting operations. Women do not attend to cattle now. As to the immorality, undoubtedly a great deal of what is coarse and rude does pass upon the hayfield, but the hayfield does not originate it; if the same men and women met elsewhere, the same jokes would be uttered and conduct indulged in. The position of agricultural women is a painful one to contemplate, and their lives full of hardships; but field-labour cannot be fairly accused as the cause of the evils they endure. Their strength is overstrained in the cornfield; but what can you do? It is their gold-mine—their one grand opportunity of getting a little money. It would be cruel kindness to deny it to them; and, in point of fact, except by interfering with the liberty of the subject, it would be impossible to prevent them. Farm-labour is certainly to be preferred to much of the work that women do in manufacturing districts. At least there is no overcrowding; there is plenty of fresh air, and the woman who works in the field looks quite as robust and healthy as her sister sitting all day in a confined factory.
It used to be common to see women dressed in a kind of smock-frock; this was in the days when they milked, and it is still occasionally worn. Now they generally wear linsey dresses in the winter, and cotton in the summer, at prices from 4½d. to 6d. per yard. They wear boots nailed and tipped much like the men, but not so heavy, and in rough weather corduroy gaiters. Their cooking is rude and detestable to any one else's ideas; but it appears exactly suited to the coarse tastes and hearty appetite of their husbands. Being uneducated, and a large proportion unable to read, their chief intellectual amusement consists in tittle-tattle and gossip. They are generally inclined to be religious after a fashion, and frequent the chapel or the cottage in which the itinerant preacher holds forth. In summer this preacher will mount upon a waggon placed in a field by the roadside, and draw a large audience, chiefly women, who loudly respond and groan and mutter after the most approved manner. Now and then an elderly woman may be found who is considered to have a gift of preaching, and holds forth at great length, quoting Scripture right and left. The exhibitions of emotion on the part of the women at such meetings and in the services in their cottages are not pleasant to listen to, but the impression left on the mind is that they are in earnest.
They are a charitable race, and eager to help each other. They will watch by the bedsides of their sick neighbours, divide the loaf of bread, look after the children and trudge weary miles to the town for medicine. On the other hand, they are almost childlike in imbibing jealousies and hatreds, and unsparing in abuse and imputation towards a supposed enemy. They are bolder in speech than their husbands to those who occupy higher places in the social scale. It cannot be said that agricultural women are handsome. In childhood they are too often thin and stunted; later they shoot up and grow taller, but remain thin and bony till from eighteen to twenty, when they get plumper, and then is their period of prettiness, if at all. Bright eyes, clear complexions, and glossy hair form their attractions, for their features are scarcely ever good. The brief beauty of the prime of youth speedily fades, and at five-and-twenty the agricultural woman, especially if married, is pale or else burnt by the sun to a brown, with flat chest and rounded shoulders. It is rare indeed to see a woman with any pretensions to what is called a figure. It would be wonderful if there were, for much of the labour induces a stooping position, and they are never taught when young to sit upright.