id of
the slackers. Inefficiency and slacking are often due to a man's
enfeebled mental and physical condition, owing to neglect in his
bringing up as a child, or to insufficient or unwholesome food
provided by an improvident wife in his home.

I was fortunate in meeting with very few of these degenerates, but I
remember one tall, delicate-looking man who seemed unable to apply
either his strength or his attention to his work. He was denounced by
the foreman under whom he worked as not only useless, but "the
starvenest wretch as ever I see," intended to convey the impression,
and confirming my own conclusion, that cold and hunger were really the
cause of his inability to render a fair day's work.

I remember, too, when some elderly women, with a younger one, were
hay-making, one of the old ladies, dragging the big "heel-rake" behind
the waggon in course of loading--always rather a tough job--tried to
induce the younger woman to take her place with, "Here, Sally, thee
take a turn at it; thee be a better 'ooman nor I be." My bailiff,
overhearing, at once interposed: "Be she a better 'ooman than thee,
Betsy, ov a Saturday night [pay-night]?"

Hard-and-fast laws and fixed prices for agricultural labour will be
found very difficult to maintain as to piecework; no wage board can
fix just prices, because conditions are so variable. Of two men
cutting corn on separate plots in the same field, the one at 12s. an
acre may really earn more money _per diem_ than another man at 15s. an
acre on the other side of the field, owing to the difference in the
weight of the crop or its condition, it being, perhaps, erect in the
first case, and laid by heavy storms in the second.

There is, too, a vast difference in the value of boys' work and
usefulness; one may easily be worth double another, yet no difference
is allowable by the new law; or one may demoralize another, so that
two are less effective than one. A good old saying puts the matter
very plainly: "One boy's a boy, two boys are half a boy, and three
boys are no boy at all!"

It is, in fact, ridiculous for townspeople, lawyers, and manufacturers
to legislate for the labour of the farm; they do not understand that
indoor labour in the workshop or factory, under regular conditions and
with unvarying materials, is totally different from labour out of
doors, in constantly changing conditions of season, weather, and the
resulting crops dealt with. An old maxim of the Worcestershir