VII.
The Kentish Waggoner.
(Golden Hours, 1872.)
Each county or district seems to afford the student of agricultural life in England a different problem. Here in Kent we have the labourer and his family all earning high wages; from one end of the year to the other there is plenty of work for husband, wife, and children; they are rich as farm labourers go; and yet, when the time of trial comes, they are no better off than their brethren in less favoured parts of the land. When they are sick they go to the parish, when they are old they come to the workhouse.
The solution of the problem is not far to seek. The Kentish agricultural labourer shares a delusion common enough in every class of society, that there is some wonderful talismanic power in the mere possession of the coin of the realm, which will bring a man all he really needs. This is an article in the world's creed, believed in everywhere, and by all classes of men, but nowhere with such unhesitating faith as in the country. Nay, to be wise in this particular, practical men allow that the young should learn betimes such arts as may enable them to become more clever at money-making; but to waste time in learning how to spend their money when they have got it is mere folly, since they are convinced that every one knows that art only too well already.
"Enlighten," said a Kentish farmer, "a labourer reasonably, but don't let it be only book-learning. A boy that is going to be a clerk is learning how to live when he is at school, but one that is to be a farm labourer is learning what is a luxury to him. It all depends upon a boy's growth when he is able to do work. A little chap of eight, or even less, may be useful."
