by A G Street
CHAPTER XIX
I have been informed by a friendly critic, who has watched with interest my amateurish struggles in attempting this book, that this portion of it lacks charm as compared with the earlier pages. I am afraid that this is only too true. Success and money-making, although they are often sordid, can be charming, but failure and loss can surely never be. I think that it was the placid unchanging well-being of years ago, which made rural life so charming. Possibly it is simply that age has a mellowing effect, and that one remembers only the pleasant portions of that bygone period.
I have written of the wealthy townsman, who went in for farming immediately after the war. Many of his reactions to rural life were certainly interesting. A few of these newcomers to the countryside settled down to farming, and became acclimatized very quickly, but a large proportion of them fled the countryside when farming began to be a serious drain on their pockets. One ex-manufacturer I know loved every moment of his rural existence. He was a peppery, explosive individual, who had run his works ruthlessly as a cold-blooded business proposition. To find that he was not finished with his farm employees when they ceased work for the day, pleased him greatly. To discover that his farming business was largely in the hands of the weather, partly in the hands of his employees, and only in a very minute degree affected by himself, both annoyed and amused him. ‘These fellows do exactly what they like,’ he said to me one day. ‘They don’t take the slightest notice of my wishes. They treat me as a sort of halfwit, who means well and has to be humoured. What they want….’ And here he trumpeted rebellion and rank heresy for a few minutes. But all the time there was a twinkle in his eye. He knew, and so did his men.
The older type of agricultural labourer regarded these ‘London’ farmers with suspicion. Well-meaning as some of them were the labourer did not want to be uplifted by anyone, and resented any interference in his customary habits by these interlopers, even though it might be of great benefit to him. Also he regarded these alien folk as people who had no manners. An instance of this, which deals in some measure with high society, comes to my mind.
A certain gentleman was made a peer shortly after the war, and in order to give his new rank a proper setting, he purchased a small estate in our neighbouring country. One of his farms became vacant, and was let to a new tenant. In the new agreement the incoming man was to get twelve cottages with the farm. He had another farm nearby, and, in making his arrangements, he promoted a single under-carter on his home farm to be head carter for the new venture. This man forthwith made arrangements to get married on the strength of his new job.
Now the peer and his agent had made a mistake in the number of cottages, and as Michaelmas drew near they discovered that there were only eleven available. However, Miss Mills, a spinster of sixty, lived alone in one of their other cottages in the village, and looked after her widowed father of eighty-four, who lived in another cottage next door. Accordingly the agent was instructed to tell Miss Mills that her cottage would be required, and that she must move out into her father’s house. Both cottages belonged to the estate, and as they were semi-detached, it seemed a reasonable way out of the difficulty.
The agent muddled the business, and was ordered out by the old lady. ‘Haw,’ said his employer, when he reported the result of his visit, ‘you didn’t handle that very tactfully. I had better see the woman.’
He called one afternoon, went inside without invitation, sat down on a chair without permission, neglected even to remove his hat, and baldly stated his business. The old lady was furious.
‘I’ll thank ’ee to go,’ she said, ‘at once, too.’
‘But I don’t think you realize who I am,’ he said. ‘I’m your landlord. I’m Lord Blank.’
‘Lard Blank!’ she screeched. ‘Lard Mushroom, thee’s mean. Let me tell ’ee as you be jist nothin’. I’ve a had many gentlemen in yer afore you, but I ain’t never had no one afore who hadn’t got manners enough to take off his hat.’
‘But my good woman,’ the offending peer stuttered.
‘I bain’t yer good ’ooman. Thank God, I be zummat better’n that. Look at yer. I’ve a got better manners than thee, and I’m a heap better bred. That makes ’ee look, don’t it? Who be you? Lard Mushroom! Jist a jumped-up little veller. Now you’d best goo.’
He retired discomfited, and told his agent to make the farmer some allowance for the loss of the cottage. The agent reported this to the farmer, who, greatly amused, said: ‘Don’t you worry. I can get her to shift.’ The agent bet him half a sovereign that he would fail, and went away feeling pretty certain of winning his bet.
A day or two afterwards the farmer called on Miss Mills and asked if he could have a word with her on business. She invited him inside.
‘It’s no good my beating about the bush, Miss Mills. You know what I’ve come about. I realize that you have the stronger position, and I’ve come to ask you as a personal favour to me, if you can possibly let me have the cottage. You see, it’s not my fault. I took the farm with twelve cottages, and young Frank Hardiman has had his banns published, reckoning that I had a cottage for him somewhere over here. It’ll be sort of awkward if I can’t find him one, as he’s my head carter.’
‘Ah!’ said the old lady. ‘Thee’s know ’ow to get about things. Different from thic little toad of a lard as come yer to’other day. Don’t ’ee worry. I’ll be shifted in time fer young Frank. Atter all, thee’s got to farm the place. Tell un to git married, and I got a piece o’ china fer un fer a weddin’ present.’
The farmer thanked her, and inquired as to what went amiss between her and her landlord. She told him at length, and when he cocked his eye inquiringly as she told him about her having better blood in her veins than the lord, she said: ‘Ah, now thee dussent believe I? I be a ——, I be,’ naming the ruling old aristocratic family of the neighbourhood. ‘You come ’long o’ me.’
He followed her upstairs to a bedroom, where she opened a small cupboard over the mantelpiece, and there, as in a shrine, reposed a top hat of ancient shape. Reverently she took it down and exhibited the name in the lining. It had belonged to her aristocratic sire, who had left it behind him on one of his youthful escapades some sixty odd years before.
Generally speaking, the older labourers longed for the times of long ago in spite of their increased prosperity. ‘But times are better for the men now,’ I said to a rugged old-age pensioner one day, when we were discussing rural affairs. ‘Look at the wages they get.’
‘’Tidn what they gets. What do ’em earn? Why, when I wor a young man I wor worth dree ov ’em. Do make I fair voam at mouth to zee zum ov ’em fiddlin’ about at their work.’
I met this same critic of modern times only last week, and he returned to the same topic. In the course of his remarks he touched on the proposed raising of the school age. ‘Lot o’ voolery,’ he snorted. ‘Whatever be ’em thinkin’ about? Doan’t ’em know what’ll happen? If they keeps childer at school till they be sixteen, more’n half the maids’ll be in trouble fore they do leave. Childer wants to be broke to work young, like colts. Work never hurt I, and I never knowed it hurt noboby.’
I make no comment as to whether his prophecy will be correct or not. That his remarks will be regarded as a foul slander on rural youth, I have no doubt, but I would point out that the speaker had lived for eighty years in a rural district, and therefore presumably was qualified to give his opinion. I sometimes wonder if the people in Whitehall are so well qualified.
Apart from the effects of the depression which was more and more rapidly creeping over the countryside, the actual farming itself lacked romance and charm at this date as compared with pre-war days. Agriculture was becoming mechanized. The horse was disappearing from the landscape, and giving place to the hideous tractor. I did not purchase one of these implements until our old portable steam-engine came to the point in its long and dignified career when the cost of adequate repairs was prohibitive.
When the tractor arrived the m
en viewed it with scorn. Its size as compared with the huge bulk of the steam-engine made it appear as a toy. We arranged to thresh with it a day or two after its arrival, and the feeder of the threshing machine said ‘as ’ow ’ee wor gwaine to feed zo as to bring a little pooper like that up all stand-in’.’
Next morning, when all was ready, I let in the friction clutch on the pulley wheel of the tractor, and when the hum of the threshing machine had reached its correct note, I waved my arm to the feeder to begin. He did so, and the rich hum of the thresher died away as the machine slowed down. The men’s faces were triumphant, whilst mine was the reverse. However, I noticed that although the machine slowed down, the tractor maintained its speed, and therefore the clutch must have been slipping. I stopped the engine, studied the instruction book which had come with it, and tightened various nuts and springs on the clutch.
We started again, and despite the feeder’s almost superhuman efforts the tractor drove the thresher so fast that he was nearly shaken off his perch, and was forced to admit defeat.
But all the time, at the back of everyone’s mind, was the knowledge that things were very wrong with farming. Farmers generally spent less and less time and money in sport and pleasure, and what pleasures we did indulge in had lost their savour. In this I refer to the older men. The young generation, from eighteen to twenty-five, knew nothing about the tragedy in the background, and seemingly cared less. I had a friend stopping with me in the summer of 1927, and took him one afternoon to a tennis tournament in a nearby village. Ostensibly it was in aid of a new church organ or similar object, but in reality it was an excuse for the youth of the district to have a good time.
‘But where’s this agricultural depression you’ve been telling me about?’ asked my friend, as he gazed at the array of cars and at the expensively garbed youthful throng on the tennis-courts.
‘It’s there all right, in the background,’ I said. ‘These kids don’t know anything about it, but their parents do.’
We sat and listened to the chatter. Said one young damsel to another: ‘My dear, a frightful thing’s happened. My new racket’s got a string gone. Just my luck. Whatever shall I do?’
‘Well, you’ve got another with you, so you can manage,’ replied her companion.
‘But, my dear, I shan’t be able to hit a ball with it. It’s last year’s.’
My friend looked at me, and we got up and moved away. ‘Why in the devil don’t their parents stop it?’ he burst out. ‘Why, dash it, my racket’s five years old.’
‘Don’t ask me,’ I said. ‘It’s beyond me. Pride chiefly, I expect.’
And then for five minutes he trumpeted his opinion of the farming population, and in most of it I felt bound to admit that he had reason.
But the depression was there. Farmers knew it, the older labourers knew it, the banks knew it, and, above all, the merchant or middleman knew it…. And here I would like to put in a word in defence of the middleman. It has of late become the fashion to look on him as a parasite on the community. Farmers will, I think, agree with me that he is nothing of the kind. Personally, I have yet to find a middleman who is not performing a useful service for society, and all that he can earn thereby, in my opinion, he is entitled to keep. Moreover, for the past ten years right up till to-day, the agricultural merchant has carried, and is still carrying on his shoulders, a large proportion of British farming which, but for him, would collapse ignominiously. I have lived and farmed through those troublous times, and I am grateful enough to the merchant and middleman to say ‘thank you’ publicly for the help and courtesy which I have received from them.
By 1927, which, in addition to falling prices was a bad year for weather and crops, the rotten state of things in the agricultural world became more apparent. Here and there men who were regarded as wealthy by most folk, went bankrupt. Many others who escaped this were forced to give up farming because of financial difficulties. Farmers were endeavouring to get their sons into jobs unconnected with farming when they left school. A bank or Government appointment was looked at as a safe haven for life. It became preferable to let one’s son do anything or even to do nothing, rather than to finance him in any farming venture. The landlords suddenly discovered that there was grave danger that the farms becoming vacant would have to be farmed by themselves. No one seemed to want them. So rents went down a little, but they were still above the pre-war rate.
I was struggling on, barely keeping my head above water, when early in 1927 a neighbouring farmer invited me to go with him to the north of our county in order to inspect a new milking invention. I refer to the open-air system of milk production, which was then in its infancy. Five of us made the journey in a car, and discovered this invention in what may honestly be described as ‘Heath Robinson’ condition. Quite frankly, we regarded it as a joke.
It was constructed of odd wheels and parts taken from derelict farm machinery. The milking cows were undersized, and to our ideas not worth having in a dairy. But the thing worked, and the cows produced milk. We saw a man and a boy milk and feed seventy cows in two hours that afternoon, with one of these outfits. In actual fact we saw, I think, three outfits at work. And above all, we met a man who was satisfied that his farming was prospering.
Still, we looked at his cattle, and remembered our own wealthy beasts at home. We thought of having one’s milking dependent on the spark from one magneto; we considered the difficulties and discomforts of milking in the open air during bad weather, and while we were very interested, and said so, we went in to tea with the inventor, feeling that this sort of thing could never become a general practice.
Now all that afternoon we had been literally surrounded with milk, but when our host said to his daughter that we were ready for tea, she informed him that it would be necessary to wait for a few minutes as the milk had not yet come down from the fields. This afforded us great amusement and one of the company informed the lady that had he known that they were short of milk he would have brought some down with him.
After tea we discussed costs and milk-yields with our host, and after thanking him for a most interesting afternoon, we set off for home. It is interesting to record that of the five of us who visited that farm on that occasion, four are farming under that system to-day, and the fifth, I think, will soon be doing so.
Now all that year I kept on worrying over this new idea, chiefly because my present methods were losing money, and something different had therefore to be done. I journeyed to the inventor’s farm several times in company with my neighbour. In the June of that year the latter purchased an open-air outfit, and, as he farmed nearby, I was able to get many opportunities to study it.
He paid me a compliment one day by informing me that I wasn’t quite such a b—— f—— as many young men of his acquaintance, in that I had realized for some time that farmers were living in a fool’s paradise, and also that I had made some effort to put things right.
‘What about it?’ he continued. ‘There’s more to this outdoor business than appears at first sight.’
‘I’m inclined to agree,’ I replied, ‘but I’ve tried so many things during the last few years, and found them disastrous, that I’m getting afraid to trust my own judgment.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘for your information, I’m going in it for whole hog. I’ve been milking over two hundred cows by hand in buildings, and it’s got to stop. My pocket can’t stand it.’
Now while it was a comparatively easy matter for a wealthy man of his type to change his whole system of farming, for a young man already at his last financial gasp to do so was a difficult matter. But the returns from the 1927 harvest and milk sales left me with no alternative. It was try something else or get out as a failure. True, it would be a leap into comparative darkness. I wondered if it would be a case of out of the frying-pan into the fire. Still, the frying-pan had become untenable, and as this new system of dairying seemed to show a possible way out, I decided to try it.
CHAPTER XX
> Now my farm of about seven hundred acres was in reality two farms, which had been farmed as one holding by my father for some twenty years prior to my tenancy. While it was possible for me to carry it on chiefly as an arable farm for a few more years before finally crashing, to go in for dairying solely on the whole of the farm was impossible for financial reasons. There was only one farmhouse on the two farms, so at Michaelmas 1927, I gave notice to quit the outlying farm in 1928.
The next thing was to plan for the new system. Firstly, I had to arrange the cropping on the farm which I was giving up, in proper proportions of corn, hay, and roots for the incoming tenant. Secondly, all the arable land on the home farm had to be put into corn and the grass seeds sown in this crop. I worked it that the major portion of this land was put into wheat, so that I should have a goodly store of straw for thatch in years to come.
Some description of this new system of farming is necessary here, I think, although to-day we have all got so accustomed to it in this district that we regard it as a matter of course. I will be as little technical in this description as possible.
The main point about the whole business was that one specialized in milk production, and nothing else, having no arable land at all. The cows were milked out of doors by mechanical means. A shepherd’s house on wheels housed the power plant for the milking machine, and also an electric lighting set. The cowshed was also on wheels, and possessed no floor. It contained stalls for six cows, and was fitted with a mechanical milker. There was also sufficient movable chestnut fencing to make an enclosure or corral in which to assemble the herd at milking time.
The most obvious advantage of this new system was of course in the saving of labour for the actual milking. Instead of six milkers for sixty cows, only two were required. But there were many other advantages, which, while they were perhaps not so obvious, were even more important.