It is a commonplace that war brings in its train evils without number, but there are certain ills that are added to the inevitable ones either by greed of gain, indifference to progress or a determination to make profit at the expense of the State. We have in our midst at all times certain people who are concerned only with their own ends, and who regard all the means to those ends as legitimate. War time reduces the measure of restraint that the common sense of the community imposes upon its greedier members. They find and seize their hour when normal conditions are upset. It would be easy to multiply instances, but in writing this paper I am concerned with one only—the employment of children on farms.

To the average man who does not know a swede from a turnip or the difference between sainfoin and clover this is a small matter; to those of us who know the land and its problems, who administer estates large or small, who are morally if not legally responsible for the happiness and well-being of village communities, it is a tragedy.

I can remember hearing my elders talk of the bad old days when the gang system prevailed all over England. The ganger was a contractor of irregular labour. He would enter a district in charge of his wretched company of men, women, and children, and would supply their labour at fixed rates to the farmer who needed it. He charged so much a day for each hand; he saw to it that one and all did their full day's work. They were fed abominably, housed in barns and out-houses, and lived in a promiscuity that would revolt a gipsy. At last even the thick-skinned countryside could endure the abomination no longer, and the "ganger" disappeared. It took years for the Legislature to discover that, apart from the cruelty involved in the custom, it was creating fresh material for gaols and asylums, that children needed education rather than field labour, that the mothers could not combine maternity with hard work in the fields, that if you deprive people of the means of living decently they will revert to the state of savagery.

The agricultural labourer's struggle has not been limited to the land. He has been fighting for years to raise his miserable wage. When I was a girl it was about a shilling a day with "small beer" of the farmer's brewing thrown in. It is about 3s. 6d. a day now; but against this the price of necessities has gone up between 50 and 100 per cent. Saving is impossible, and even the old age pension that lightens the evening of his long day hardly avails to keep him from the workhouse—unless he has a wife of equal age or children who, out of their tiny means, will render a little assistance. He lives in a cottage that, if often picturesque, is nearly always overcrowded; his food and clothing are of the roughest, and for holidays he has Christmas Day and the wet weather, when he may sit at home—at his own expense—for when there is no work there is no pay. But he lives in hope; and sometimes he goes on strike, to the disgust and indignation of his employer, and his children have been getting a better chance in life than he had. They are supposed to be kept at school until they are fourteen. He was rook scaring at the ripe age of ten for a penny a day.

Rural education is a poor thing enough. Children may have to walk two miles or more, in all weathers, to the village school. Their father cannot afford to buy them good boots or a water-proof coat; it is beyond his means to give them nourishing food, and so help them to fight the diseases of childhood; but he feels that something is being done for them, and, as a rule, he does nothing to make them wage-earners before their time. Now they are taken from school two years before an age that the trade unions hold to be insufficient; they are sent on the land to work for a wage of eighteen pence a day, in any weather, on any soil, without the proper clothing and with insufficient food. There they will undersell the rural labour market, they will be robbed of their childhood, they will go without supervision at a time when they need it most. And the Bumbles of our Education Councils have nodded thick, approving heads.

It is hard to write patiently of such retrograde devices, put forward, as all such proposals are, in the name of the country's needs. If these needs be genuine, which I doubt, if there be no adequate supply of female labour to be obtained for a fair price, why should the children of our poorest, the little ones whose physique has never been strengthened by sufficient nourishing food and by the hygiene of the home, be called upon to bear the burden single-handed? Why should not Eton and Harrow, Rugby, Marlborough, Winchester, and other schools without number, serve the national need? The lads at these expensive establishments can at least complete their education after the war, they can carry health and strength to the fields, they can acquaint themselves at first hand with the realities of labour, a knowledge that, with the changing times ahead, will be valuable to many of them who will inherit land in days to come. Will the farmers who are sending to the fields the half-grown children of their ill-paid labourers contribute their own to work by their side? I am sure that the mere suggestion will rouse the wildest indignation; but all the children, whatever their advantage or disadvantage, are British citizens, and it is not too much to suggest that those who have a stake in the country should at least do as much as those for whom fortune provided no birthright. Let us be democratic in deeds as well as words. I am quite sure that, if the doubtful privilege extended to the rural labourer's children were conferred at the same time upon the children of all patriots, the councils would expunge their fatuous resolutions from their minute books; they would make all possible haste to forget them.

But it may be urged that, in pleading for the children, I have overlooked the crying needs of the countryside, that I am ignorant of the real need for labour to deal with the increased area of the corn and for the late-sown spring crops, for it is clear that, as soon as the proposal for universal child labour is made, the scheme falls to the ground.

I am well aware of the existing conditions—what landlord is not?—and I have a remedy for them. It is not a popular one, but I am not searching for popularity. In spite of the genuine sacrifices that have been made by many classes of the community, much more remains to be done. We have all over the country racing stables full of lads who cannot go to the war and of men who have passed serviceable age. Hard work in the fields from April to the time the last corn is under the stack thatch would do them all the good in the world, and, with some knowledge of all classes of horses, I believe that horses would survive and the superiority of the British sires would not be lost.

Having depleted the racing stables, even at the cost of reducing the number of race meetings, I would turn my attention to the golf clubs: their name is legion. What an army of "ineligible" caddies might be recruited for the fields and given the chance of earning a living intelligently! I go so far as to hint that thousands of the elderly gentlemen who still pursue the golf ball might find more useful occupation in ministering to the country's genuine needs.

Let me pass from one monstrous suggestion to another. I would enroll the gamekeepers and the gillies; for once I would leave the wild pheasants to breed as they will and the grouse to work out their own salvation. A desperate remedy, but then our disease is dangerous. We need corn even more than pheasants, and other game birds can look after themselves. There might be an epidemic of poaching, in which case I would sentence every poacher to three months' hard labour—on the land. We have in this country to-day hundreds, I might say thousands, of sturdy middle-aged men who are now following occupations that, while they are perfectly reasonable in times of peace, are superfluous, even derogatory, to-day.

There is yet another class that can be mobilised to serve the country's need. I would like to see the last remaining footmen and the valets of middle age allowed to enjoy a summer of useful activity. They, too, may be in their right place at normal times; now their country needs them more than their masters do. A little hardship would be involved, but I do not believe there are many employers of superfluous or ornamental labour who would, if the matter were put before them fairly and temperately, place their own petty comforts before the country's need for food. We hope and believe that we may rely upon our Fleet to feed us, but why should we run risks? No war is won until it is lost, and if by ill-fortune we experienced a shortage, I do not think that the owners of racing stables, the renters of shooting and fishing, the members of golf clubs and the employers of men servants could acquit themselves of a serious responsibility. If all these sources of supply are tapped, and it is still found that the supply of labour in the fields is inadequate to the nation's needs, let us proclaim a national holiday in all the schools of the country, and let the high and the low born, the rich and the poor, seek the fields together. But until all sources of adult labour have been exhausted let us spare the little ones, and in any case let us see that those whose share of the good things of life is smallest are not called upon to endure trials and make sacrifices that we would shrink from demanding of our own children.