A LITTLE PLACE IN NORFOLK.

Theodore Hook’s hero, Jack Bragg, boasted of his “little place in Surrey.” The Guardians of the Guiltcross poor have good reason to be proud of their little place in Norfolk. When the Guiltcross Union was formed, Mr. Thomas Rackham, master of the “house,” set aside a small estate for the purpose of teaching the Workhouse children how to cultivate land. This pauper’s patrimony consisted of exactly one acre one rood and thirty-five poles of very rough “country.” A certain number of the boys worked upon it so diligently, that it was soon found expedient to enlarge the domain, by joining to it three acres of “hills and holes,” which in that state were quite useless for agricultural purposes. Two dozen spades were purchased at the outset to commence digging the land with, and six wheel-barrows were made by a pauper, who was a wheelwright; pickaxes and other tools were also fashioned with the assistance of the porter, who was a blacksmith. By means of these tools, and the labour of some fourteen sturdy boys, the whole of this barren territory was levelled, the top sward being carefully kept uppermost. We copy these and the other details from Mr. Rackham’s report to the Guardians, for the information and encouragement of other Workhouse masters, who may have the will and the power to “go and do likewise.”

It appears then, that by the autumn of 1846 one acre of the new land was planted with wheat, and two roods twenty three poles of the home land—the one acre one rood and thirty-five poles mentioned above—was also planted with wheat, making in all one acre two roods and twenty three poles under wheat for 1847. This land produced eighteen coombs three pecks beyond a sufficient quantity reserved for seed for the wheat crop of 1848. The remainder of the land was planted with Scotch kale, cabbages, potatoes, &c., &c., which began coming into use in March, 1847. The entire domain is now under fruitful cultivation.

“The quantity of vegetables actually consumed by the paupers according to the dietary tables only,” says Mr. Rackham, “is charged in the provision accounts. Persons acquainted with domestic management and the produce of land are aware that, where vegetables are purchased, a great deal is paid for that which is useless for cooking purposes. In the present case this refuse is carefully preserved and used for feeding pigs, which were first kept in April 1848. This accounts for the large amount of pork fatted, as compared with the small quantity of corn and pollard used for the pigs. The leaves, &c., not eaten by the pigs, become valuable manure. If the Guardians would consent to keep cows, different roots and vegetables might be grown to feed them with; and these would produce an increased quantity of manure, whilst an increased quantity of manure would afford the means of raising a larger amount of roots and green crops, and secure a more extended routine in cropping the land. This would add to the profit of the land account, and give much additional comfort to the aged people and the young children in the workhouse.” But Mr. Rackham is ambitious of a dairy, chiefly for the training of dairy-maids: who would become doubly acceptable as farm servants.

Besides other advantages, the experiment presents one dear to the minds of rate-payers—it tends to reduce the rates. The average 576profit per annum on each of the acres has been fifteen pounds. Here are the sums:—The profit of the first year was sixty pounds two shillings and fourpence farthing; second year, fifty-one pounds seventeen shillings and sixpence; to Christmas, 1849, three-quarters of a year, sixty-seven pounds two shillings and one penny farthing; total, one hundred and seventy-nine pounds one shilling and elevenpence halfpenny.

As at the Swinton and other pauper schools, a variety of industrial arts are taught in the Guiltcross Union house, and the fact that sixty of the boys and girls who have been trained in it are now earning their own living, is some evidence of the success of the system pursued there.

Of one of the cultivators of this “little place in Norfolk” (not we believe an inmate of the Union), an agreeable account was published in a letter from Miss Martineau lately in the Morning Chronicle. It shows to what good account a knowledge of small farming may be turned. That lady having two acres of land, at Ambleside, in Westmoreland, which she wished to cultivate, sent to Mr. Rackham to recommend her a farm servant. The man arrived, and his Guiltcross experience in cultivating small “estates” proved of essential service. He has managed to keep two cows and a pig, besides himself and a wife, on these narrow confines; for Miss Martineau calculates that the produce in milk, butter, vegetables, &c., obtained from his skill and economy for herself and household, quite pays his wages. This is her account of him:—

“He is a man of extraordinary industry and cleverness, as well as rigid honesty. His ambition is roused; for he knows that the success of the experiment mainly depends on himself. He is living in comfort, and laying by a little money, and he looks so happy that it would truly grieve me to have to give up; though I have no doubt that he would immediately find work at good wages in the neighbourhood. His wife and he had saved enough to pay their journey hither out of Norfolk. I gave him twelve shillings a week all the year round. His wife earns something by occasionally helping in the house, by assisting in my washing, and by taking in washing when she can get it. I built them an excellent cottage of the stone of the district, for which they pay one shilling and sixpence per week. They know that they could not get such another off the premises for five pounds a year.”

This is all very interesting and gratifying, but there are two sides to every account. Supposing the system of agricultural and other industrial training were pursued in all Unions in the country (and if it be a good system, it ought to be so followed), then, instead of boys and girls being turned out every three years in sixties, there would be accessions of farmers, tailors, carpenters, dairy-maids, and domestic servants every year to be reckoned by thousands. Supposing that every fourteen of the agricultural section of the community had been earning fifteen pounds a year profit per acre, we should then have a large amount of produce brought into the market in competition with that of the independent labourer. When, again, the multitude of boys had passed their probation, themselves would be thrown in the labour market (as the sixty Guiltcross boys already have been), so that their older and weaker competitors would, in their turn, be obliged to retire to the Workhouse, not only to their own ruin, but to the exceeding mortification of the entire body of parochial rate-payers. The axiom, that when there is a glut in a market any additional supply of the same commodity is an evil, applies most emphatically to labour. In this view, the adoption of the industrial training system for paupers and criminals would be an evil; and an evil of the very description it is meant to cure—a pauperising evil.

The easy and natural remedy is a combination of colonisation, with the industrial training system. In all our colonies ordinary, merely animal labour is eagerly coveted, and skilled labour is at a high premium. There a competition for, instead of against, all sorts of labour is keenly active. Yet great as is the demand, it is curious that no comprehensive system for the supply of skilled labour has yet been adopted. Except the excellent farm school of the Philanthropic Society at Red Hill, no attempt is made to teach colonisation. The majority of even voluntary colonists are persons utterly ignorant of colonial wants. They have never learned to dig or to delve. Many clever artists have emigrated to Australia, where pictures are not wanted; not a few emigrant ladies, of undoubted talents in Berlin work and crochet, have always trembled at the approach of a cow, and never made so much as a pat of butter in their lives. Still they succeed in the end; but only after much misery and mortification, which would have been saved them if they had been better prepared for colonial exigencies. The same thing happens with the humbler classes. Boys, and even men, have been sent out to Canada and the Southern Colonies (especially from the Irish Unions), utterly unfitted for their new sphere of life and labour.

If, therefore, the small beginnings at Guiltcross be imitated in other Unions (and it is much to be wished that they should be), they will be made to grow into large results. But these results must be applied not to clog and glut the labour market at home; but to supply the labour market abroad.

If to every Union were attached an agricultural training school, upon a plan that would offer legitimate inducements for the pupils to emigrate when old enough and skilled enough to obtain their own livelihood, this country would, we are assured, at no distant date be de-pauperised.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

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565 the deuce—if the brand—the alcohol-and-water the deuce—if the brandy—the alcohol-and-water

Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

Renumbered footnotes.