28 Labourers and Marriage
In the mornings and during the early part of the afternoon at this time there were more than the three of us, for we were generally joined by the land girls from the dairies. At this farm the land girls seldom stayed long, new ones always coming and going; and for that reason it is difficult for me to include them in my canvass, as it were, in spite of the friends I have made, especially one. If it were asked what the Land Army did during the war, the answer is quite simple – they got the milk for the nation. Of course they did a great deal else as well – and would the potatoes have been lifted without them? – but the main fact is this that the nation would hardly have got its milk without their help.
Thus in company hoeing went much better, for there is nothing like chat for passing the time. I sometimes wonder whether economists, sociologists, heavy-weight philosophers, and world meliorists pay enough attention to the ordinary remarks of ordinary people. In the course of conversation, a land girl (who was in love with Dick) said to Harold – ‘Oh you’ve nothing to worry about. You’re married. You have all you want.’ A perfectly simple and straightforward statement which was received by Harold without the slightest demur. It is worth bearing in mind the simple desires and natural aims of people, especially women. For whatever unfeminine feminists may preach, women, the most sophisticated as well as the most simple, invariably say sooner or later – ‘All I want is to make a home.’ The modern publicist who feels it necessary to make it quite clear that of course he doesn’t imagine that ‘women’s place is the home’ might just as well say that of course women don’t really produce children. (It is the phrase that is wrong, and the conditions, not the actuality.) The idea that women could actually bear children without at the same time being particularly interested in and gifted for dealing with the machinery of keeping them going (often called home life), ought to be too silly ever to be discussed. There is also a lesser difference between men and women – namely that women are more human than men. For that reason they find it difficult to endure non-personal, wholly objective work when performed alone. Thus agriculture (except on the stock side) is nearly as unsuitable for women as is nautical work. In spite of the fact that they are so much stronger than men in many ways, and because of that extra muscle which physiologists say is situated at the base of their tongues, agriculture will remain alien to them until far more people work on the land – for indifference to the object gets a woman down much easier than a man.
But Harold, beyond saying that he would like a thousand pounds a year, did not demur in the least to the statement that, being married, he had everything he wanted (he had courted his wife for eight years). For this is true of many men as well as women. It is especially true amongst the working classes generally, and still more so among agricultural labourers, all of whom always marry – it is simply not done not to have a wife. And for them, as for the working class as a whole, there is no marriage problem, no sex problem, no domestic problem. For the most part the woman simply toes the line, she has no other course. Or there may be harmony. Or she may be the stronger and have the upper hand. But there is no great over-conscious problem made of the situation. They dare not think about it for there is no escape. When things are bad they are terrible – for there isn’t the hard cash to separate. On this score I have sometimes come upon the greatest bitterness in connection with the actuality here of one law for the rich and another for the poor.
On the whole, however, there is no time for the refinements of domestic infelicity any more than for the leisured infelicities. I have often thought how far removed this world here is from what one might call the Virginia Woolf world of upper-middle-class frustration, time to think (without effect), time to dream (without pleasure), time to feel wasted and lost: what can a bit more money do to make up for this! And, we may add, in the agricultural world there is very little time for the young men to indulge in refined vices. Hence Buchmanism would be inconceivable amongst them. Mr Buchman (sometimes called Dr), was an American psychologist who in the name of religion gathered round him a huge following of university students to confess their private vices. Such introspection is unknown to the young man who gets up at six-thirty every morning and is hard at it till six-thirty in the evening. (Also the religious idealism that genuinely accompanied Buchmanistic confessions is foreign to him.)
Moreover, they do not read. Readers who read a great deal as a matter of course can hardly realize the state of mind of those who don’t read at all. It is very different, doubtless. Reading – especially novels – makes us all far more conscious of ourselves and of other people and of our emotions and situations and reactions. We are not conscious about everything in the absurd degree presupposed in novels, we do not dream of emphasizing life in that way; but when we read about problems which approximate to our own we then brood upon our own. The non-readers are nothing like as aware of their feelings as they would be if they read about the emotions of others and the domestic problems of invented characters – though I sometimes wish that they were a little more conscious of their unconscious, for an obvious motive disguised by a trumpery reason is irritating. I am inclined to think that a non-reader takes life easier if less fully. A neighbour of mine enjoys a drink at the pub. But if I ask him to come out he often has to excuse himself at the last minute – his wife having stopped it, being afraid of him getting into mischief. I doubt if this annoys him much, however, or if he lets it get him down, or asks himself whether he has married the right woman and so on. Not being steeped in books which touch on problems of this kind, he probably doesn’t think about it at all. Life doesn’t present itself in the form that it does to those whose minds are broadened and often corrupted by reading. I never heard my companions make a psychological generalization about life or women or marriage, and if I ever did so few of them took the slightest interest. The most they will run to in this direction is, to quote Robert for instance – ‘She’ll always come home on Saturday night’; or, to quote Harold concerning a certain girl who had an extra affair – ‘If she done it once she’ll do it again,’ indeed he kept repeating this much to the annoyance of the girl’s friend – ‘If she done it once she’ll do it again.’ I never heard him make any other generalization of any kind, and I doubt if he ran to more than this sovereign idea that if she done it once she’ll do it again. Dick did like reading and was much more alive to the world and the possibilities of life than most of the others; and talking of girls he said – ‘I don’t like the kind of girl you go out with three times, and then – “How’s your father?” ’
It is right here that farmers themselves, alone in the British community, know how to choose their wives. They are the only people who show wisdom in this matter. Thus in the agricultural world there is no such thing as a nagging wife. The farmer’s position is extremely favourable for keeping her down. He is up early; he is on the move incessantly; he is always grappling with difficulties and anxieties; he is invariably in a hurry; he is continually let down by man and nature; there is nothing abstract or invisible about his work, it can be so clearly seen, it is hugely writ; he is tired and hungry at the end of his hard day’s work. This puts him into an impregnable position. You can hardly be petty with a man thus fortressed. You can’t suggest that a little pleasure would be nice, since he forgoes pleasures, the hard-working, careful man. The only thing to do is to outdo him in virtue and also renounce relaxation. This is the line taken by farmers’ wives, and one wonders whether the nation, while handing bouquets to the men for the work done, fully realizes the part played by the wives.
William Cobbett, wise in everything, provides here also the prototype of how to choose your wife as a farmer. He spotted her in New Brunswick. ‘It was dead of winter, and, of course, the snow several feet deep on the ground, and the weather piercing cold. In about three mornings after I had first seen her I had got two young men to join me in my walk; and our road lay by the house of her father and mother. It was hardly light, but she was out in the snow,
scrubbing out a washing-tub. “That’s the girl for me,” I said, when we had got out of her hearing.’ In due course they married and lived happily ever after.
29 Hoeing with ’E
When we had finished this particular field of kale and swedes – how quickly the scene had changed since I had dragged it, chain-harrowed it, cultivated it, rolled it, couched it! – we were sent off to another stretch of kale at the far end of the farm. We assembled and looked round – there was about eleven acres of it. The kale was submerged in a mass of thistles, mutton-docks, and charlock. How could we make any impression on such a field? we wondered. Harold said that the only sensible thing to do would be to plough it in. I wondered; for that is exactly what Robert had said about the former one I had been on – ‘’E should plough it in, it won’t come to no good letting it bide, I allow.’ But in a few weeks it had risen up quite well.
The farmer who knows his job is careful not to take advice from his men. When in a quandary concerning the best place to build a rick in view of subsequent threshing, ’E occasionally asked Robert what he thought about it; but on the whole he was superbly independent. He would have pleased old William Cobbett who, in a little-known book on forestry, remarks upon how foolish it is for a boss ever to consult his men before making a decision. ‘Let me exhort you,’ he wrote, ‘to give simple and positive orders, and never, no, never to encourage, by your hesitation, even your bailiff or gardener so much as to offer you advice.’ And again, ‘Above all things, avoid asking their advice, and even telling them your intentions. If you do this, even with the foreman, they will all soon become councillors. They will deliberate ten times a day; and those who deliberate know not any sense in the word obedience. As many hands as you like, but only one head.’
This field was well situated, miles off the track of general inspection, and we had a pleasant time that morning, Harold, Dick and myself. It was very hot, and during the dinner-hour I procured a bottle of beer which we could tap during the afternoon. Thus the three of us started off in a good frame of mind, and having chosen a sensible ‘cut’ which would make the best show, we did not intend to overdo it.
We had the field to ourselves except for the carter who had now come to broadcast artificial, but was out of sight over the rill. But in a very short time we saw the van draw up outside the gate. ‘The Van!’ said Harold, ‘The Van!’ said Dick. And all of us became very interested in our hoeing. ‘I reckon ’E’s going over to the carter,’ said Harold. But at that moment the Van did a terrible thing, it came into the field, and the gate was closed behind. ‘That means he’s going to stay,’ said Dick. ‘I bet he’s coming to hoe with us,’ I said; and sure enough in a moment we saw him, hoe in hand, coming across to join us! And without any greeting or the slightest attempt at a bonhomie approach, he joined us in silence, and a great silence fell as we worked. I tried to humanize the situation slightly by saying that I wished that the mutton-docks were mutton chops. This decimal point of a joke was taken up by ’E who added another one per cent of humour to the idea. And Harold laughed, though Dick preserved a dead silence. Not being able to think of any further motif for conversation we relapsed into silence again, which was not broken till ’E suddenly reprimanded Dick for his slack way of hoeing – ‘You might as well leave the field as do it that way,’ he said, which brought the bitter rejoinder from Dick about ‘no appreciation if he did well’, and a further rejoinder from ’E saying – ‘If I speak civil to you I expect you to speak civil to me,’ for he was convinced that he himself always spoke civilly, and as a matter of fact Dick was generally more uncivil to him than he to Dick.
Meanwhile the beer was in the hedge. It was permissible at this farm, during a hot afternoon, not to stop working, but at intervals to take a swill of lemonade or cold tea. So I said to Harold – ‘It makes one thirsty, this heat,’ and when we got to the bottom of our row he went and had a drink from the bottle, whispering to me on return ‘that’s saved my life’. Dick and I did likewise on coming down again, each saying loudly ‘nothing like cold tea for a thirst’, feeling that the word beer would sound too much in the nature of a planned debauchery. By this time the carter had come near us on his errand with the artificial, having made it snappy since the arrival of the Van. He observed this drinking of the beer, and though he knew that I always had a beer-bottle with me normally for cold tea, he was aware from fifty yards off that it was beer we were having, not tea. How he knew this I cannot say, but I was informed afterwards that he did know it. He was knowledgeable about beer. ‘There’s nothing ’e don’t know about beer,’ they said.
At last five-thirty arrived, and we had had very nearly four hours of this without a break. On the tick of that hour the three of us stopped dead, and ’E had to stop also and go off to the van. Had we not done so we knew that we would have gone over the time. So we simply ‘shut out’ abruptly, without comment.
30 The Labourer’s Theory of Knowledge
If any farmers happen to read this book they may feel that I have only given one side of the picture. This may be true. But since most books on the land are written by farmers, landowners, or agricultural specialists, I shall be glad indeed if through me the labourer’s view finds expression. At the same time I can hardly help being also alive to the other side. Nothing would induce me to take on the job of running a farm of my own with its attendant responsibility and appalling anxiety. I know well enough that time, for instance, is seen from exactly the opposite end by the boss – he is always behind, he must husband every minute. And I know perfectly well that all labourers will take the fullest possible advantage of a weak man. All men, and all women even more so, are bullies. Precisely to the degree in which a person is weak, advantage will be taken by the other side; whether between labourer and boss, or husband and wife, or parent and child, or master and pupil, or governor and governed. I always see this fact of human behaviour with the clarity of an image. I see it in the form of a spring of great elasticity. If much pressure is exerted against that spring it can be held right down. If no pressure is exerted against it, it will go out and out and out. It is not good to keep it right down. It is not good to let it expand right out. We are all afraid of that spring. In their fear some men try to keep it right down – with bad results. Others exert only a tiny nervous pressure – and are swept away. The thing is to hold a reasonable balance. This image may not be clear or useful to others, but I take a chance with it, since it is clear and useful to me.
There is an interesting remark which I have often heard here and elsewhere, not uncommon anywhere when some boss or foreman is mentioned. ‘The trouble is,’ they say, ‘’e’s so ignorant.’ By this they do not mean that he lacks knowledge. They mean that he lacks manners. It is a significant remark. For what is manners? Manners is psychology. It is the understanding of the simple psychological needs of other people. It is homage paid to the strikingly simple fact that people like you to address them amiably, to show appreciation, and to say thank you at intervals. If a man does not know this and act upon it he is called ignorant by labourers under him. That is their philosophy of education. I recommend it to the educational pundits who are shocked at the existence of those schools that really do understand the importance of teaching manners. If I were not afraid of holding up my narrative I would enjoy nothing better than to dig down to the further fundamentals involved here. I shall content myself with observing that when we go one step further we find that manners lead to morals.
Let a farmer then, I would say, exert a reasonable pressure upon the spring, with the applied psychology of a good manner, throwing in many a ‘thank you’, many a greeting, many a word of praise (it need not always be sincere), not to mention occasional sympathetic inquiry regarding a man’s mishap or trouble. The grossest advantage would be taken of such behaviour. It would be taken once. It need not be twice. For the farmer could then afford to pounce upon any man, with real fury, and could do so with ten times more force and effect than if his normal behaviour was unamiabl
e. I would myself make it a rule to pounce whenever the occasion justified it, even if I didn’t feel angry. And to any man, ‘the soul of good nature’, who feels himself to be an exception to my generalizations about bullies, I would say that those who intend to accomplish anything in this world should try to control their good temper just as others should control their bad temper. And should anyone wish to be reminded of a delightful and classic example of just how to deal with the insolence of mankind, he can find it in Mr A G Street’s Farmer’s Glory, when a certain labourer thinks he can easily force the young boss’s hand, but is given notice instead.
31 Lack of Cooperation
During the following days we had the field to ourselves, without any appearance of the Van. Conversation included discussion concerning the hour at which we received our money every Saturday fortnight. The word Wages, by the way, is never used unless it is preceded by the adjective ‘higher’. It is always ‘I’ve come for my money’ or ‘here’s your money’. The words my money are felt to carry the idea of my rights better than Wages. Yet the latter word is a much nicer one. There is a touch of poetry in it. Preachers used to say that the wages of sin were death. That was good rhetoric, so no one questioned it. Had the preacher said that the salary of sin or the fees of sin were death, he would never have got away with it.
The time at which we received our pay was between six and seven on the Saturday. (This business varies enormously from farm to farm.) It was a very unpopular hour. They couldn’t go out unless they got back early. And their wives were without shopping money: or so they said – probably untruly. For they surely cannot live up to the hilt like that. I mean except in some cases it cannot be necessary. Yet it may be true. True when the wages were twelve shillings a week; true now that they are three pounds and ten shillings; true if they were ten pounds; while we all know that the thousand-a-year man is very hard up – for here is another ‘spring’. However, it is a trait very pleasing to employers.
The Worm Forgives the Plough Page 17