CHAPTER XXX.
COMMERCE AND AGRICULTURE.
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ONE of the most distinguishing features between commerce and agriculture undoubtedly is the marked indifference shown to the value of time by the small followers of the latter, compared to the respectful treatment it receives at the hands of the members of the commercial world. To look at their relative movements one would think that the farmer was the man who carried on his business under cover, instead of being the one who exposes all his capital to the weather. It is a rare thing to see a farmer—even in hay time—in a hurry. If the returns could be obtained we dare say it would be found that three-fourths of the people who are late for railway trains are farmers.
In these accelerated days, when even the very street waggon horses trot, they are the only beings whose pace has not been improved. The small farmer is just the same slowly moving dawdling creature that he was before the perfection of steam. Never punctual, never ready, never able to give a direct answer to a question; a pitchfork at their backs would fail to push some of these fellows into prosperity. They seem wholly lost to that emulative spirit which actuates the trader to endeavour to make each succeeding year leave him better than the last. A farmer will be forty years on a farm without having benefited himself, his family, his landlord, or any human being whatever. The last year’s tenancy will find him as poor as the first, with, in all probability, his land a great deal poorer. In dealing, a small farmer is never happy without a haggle. Even if he gets his own price he reproaches hiself when he returns home with not having asked a little more, and so got a wrangle. Very often, however, they outwit themselves entirely by asking so much more than a thing is really worth, that a man who knows what he is about, and has no hopes of being able to get the sun to stand still, declines entering upon an apparently endless negotiation.
See lawyer Hindmarch coming up the High Street at Halterley fair, leading his great grey colt, with his landlord Sir Moses hailing him with his usual “Well my man, how d’ye do? I hope you’re well, how much for the colt?”
The lawyer’s keen intellect—seeing that it is his landlord, with whom he is well over the left—springs a few pounds upon an already exorbitant price, and Sir Moses, who can as he says, measure the horse out to ninepence, turns round on his heel with a chuck of his chin, as much as to say, “you may go on.” Then the lawyer relenting says, “w—h—o—y, but there’ll be summit to return upon that, you know, Sir Moses, Sir.”