The Worm Forgives the Plough

by John Stewart Collis

  My journeys sometimes took me past the poultry. Took me past is right, for I don’t stop to look at hens. ‘The cold, greedy, completely egoistic eye of the hen,’ as Ralph Wightman puts it, is enough to make anyone turn aside – not to mention that smell which suffocates the heart. Nor does the nosiness, the sniffing inquisitiveness of heifers appeal to me. Lie down for half an hour or leave a bicycle in a field with heifers at the far end, and sure enough in a short time the whole lot will come nosing round, and when driven off will presently come again exactly as if you were a magnet. Whereas cows will often regard you with indifference. There were some excellent cows in the dairies here, and there are few animals more comforting to stand beside than a sleek well-fed cow – or more mysterious and baffling. As for their cash value, I was surprised to learn that a really good one can fetch a thousand pounds. The truculent urban motorist who hoots his way through cows on the road would change his tune if he knew their money measure. It now amuses me to think how his jaundiced eye would moisten with greed if he found a thousand-pound cow blocking the path of his car (itself likely to fetch about thirty pounds). Probably he would raise his hat to it.

  Both the dairies here were run on the basis of machine-milking. One was an ordinary cow-shed converted, the other a modern building constructed precisely for the purpose of machine-milking. These strawless, woodless, regimented stalls have a sad unhomeliness about them. To look at them when empty does really chill the heart. Nor is it possible to warm up when the work is in progress, and amidst the loud noise of the engine, you witness the red rubber fingers, the milk-pipes, and the truly mechanical nature of the proceedings.

  Of course this way is no more illegitimate than the other. Cows were never made originally to be milked by hand, or to be milked by man at all. All that milk was not required. We have created it. We have put those big bags of milk on the cow. Originally a cow, presumably, had about as much milk as a mare, and the teats were violently jerked by the calf. The hand is obviously an unnatural appliance here and, curiously enough, the machine appliance gets nearer to the original jerking of the calf’s mouth – a machine, the ugliest of all, actually getting closer to nature! Of course this is a mere accident, a fluke, which is balanced by the heartlessness of the whole thing. Not necessarily heartless perhaps, for at bottom everything depends upon our attitude of mind; but it promotes the tendency to treat animals as if they were machines. ‘I always tell my students,’ said Professor McGregor to Mr Rolf Gardiner before an approving audience, ‘treat a cow exactly as you would treat a tractor.’

  As to whether the new method is better or worse than the old from a utilitarian point of view, I express no opinion. But if I go into a hall to hear a subject of this kind discussed by the knowledgeable, I know exactly what to expect. Two schools of thought will be advanced, each giving a convinced opinion backed by experience and particular instance. The argument will swing to and fro, and all to no purpose, for a new invention, when it satisfies an immediate need without obviously doing harm, always goes on its way without reference to ultimate aims.

  Why is it so useful? Because it is an immense saver of time and labour – being able to milk twenty-five cows in an hour. A detached mind might contemplate the humour of this answer with some slight degree of amusement. Two things are saved: labour and time. So our question is – What is done with the saved labour? Either nothing at all, since labour-saving devices are coming in every day, or those relieved from hand-milking can theoretically (very theoretically) go now and make machine-milkers. Well, what is done with the time that is saved? Nothing whatever at the moment. We are quite unprepared to deal with this new uneconomic problem. The saved time is chucked away like a dirty piece of paper into the fire. The length of working hours remains exactly the same for the labourers as before. There are fewer labourers, but their hours are the same amount; while the displaced workers (unless they do go and make machine-milkers) are paid a fee to keep away, called Unemployment Benefit or the Dole. These are the lucky ones, you may say, who have stolen a march on us and have entered the Leisure State in advance. The trouble is they don’t seem to appreciate their good fortune.

  But, it will be urged, since this saving of labour and time is all so unreal, what then is the reality? Quite simple – it saves money. The employer’s money. There are few employers, many workers. But since power is always in the hands of the few, they can safely embark upon every new money-saving device.

  We need not lose heart. It is all paving the way towards the Leisure State of the future. Always an optimist, I feel sure that we shall be economically ready and mentally fit for it in less than three hundred years.

  8 Tractor v Horse

  I cannot regard myself as a tremendous animal lover. I find them too baffling. I have sometimes looked searchingly into the eyes of a cow or a horse wondering what on earth it saw through its own dim windows, what it thought if it did think – hoping it didn’t. I am a socialist at heart (also an aristocrat), and am inclined to extend my socialism to animals. So much so that I have to check myself sometimes from apologizing to one or other of them for my behaviour. It seems to me that they also should qualify for the ideal of Rights (there are no natural Rights). For this reason when I see a row of cows strung along the tubes of a machine-milker I feel that there is something deplorable about it – as if the cow itself were our invention.

  For the same reason I welcome the tractor. Today horses get a thin time of it on the land. This is not always so, but it is so now in this transition period. There is no emphasis on the care of horses, and the young men (soon to be the old men) have no feeling for them. The emphasis is upon the tractor. It is a real machine-horse, and much more powerful, and can go anywhere and do anything that a horse can do. Horses could now be released from their slavery. This view will not meet with the approval of those who dislike machines and love the spectacle of horses in the field. I occasionally meet people who imagine that they are being poetical when they are only being sentimental. They know nothing of the hardness of that rock from which the spark of poetry is struck. They cannot see. Hence the proverbial cruelty of your sentimentalist. He does not see a horse for what it is, a living creature in its own right, but only a picture of a horse, and is enchanted by the idea of that most pitiless of all victimizations – cavalry. And in this lesser matter of the horse versus the tractor he never dreams of taking into consideration the feelings of the horse.

  My own view of machinery is not notable for consistency; but I welcome a machine which is in the right place, when it is full of use, useful; and not when we should use much less of it, when it is useless. It is unnecessary to go to extremes. Not long ago I saw the photograph of an interesting gentleman called Captain Roberts who had invented a motor car which came to him when he whistled for it, and of a man who had invented the means by which he could drive a tractor while he stood at the corner of the field simply pressing a button. Such men have their place in our comedy and add to the gaiety of nations. But in practice they go too far.

  Since the second tractor on the farm was not used by any definite worker, I seized the opportunity to use it myself. I am no engineer and not at all mechanically minded. Further, I lack a natural ingenuity and capacity for improvisation, both of which are called for constantly when dealing with agricultural equipment, mechanical or otherwise – though I now realize that ingenuity and improvisation are largely a matter of habit and experience. And though I had driven motor cars for some years, I had not bothered to form a mechanical sense, considering myself as a person who either knows or doesn’t know a thing, and who therefore should not waste time in going into matters which can be dealt with by others. But I did not and do not regard machines and their workings as terribly mysterious or unknowable. A mechanic is only an unglorified botanist. The chemical explosions that occur in the cylinders of an engine cannot be more difficult to deal with than the chemical explosions that occur in the parenchyma of a plant, and there is surely nothing more complicated about
a piston than a pistil.

  9 Mishaps with Tractor

  One must force the pace if one is ever to do anything, so when a favourable opportunity offered, I suggested to ’E that I should use the spare tractor. He agreed, and said that a given field needed rolling. He took me to the tractor, started it up, told me to drive off, while he stood on the step beside me. By a lucky chance I found the right gear and we went up to the roller. It was a three-piece roller, and not at the moment connected together, the two small rollers that are attached one on each side of the large one having been left beside it. Thus a good deal of turning and backing was necessary in order to couple them up and assemble the whole. I was lucky in my first backing and brought the coupling-pins exactly in line, but got it all wrong on the second occasion, having to go forward and back several times while ’E waited in irritation. Since the three pieces had been left haphazard and since I did not see at a glance where they should go and what moves I should make, and since I could not follow ’E’s instructions, it took some time before I did what was required. But at length it was done and I was left to get on with the job.

  After a very short time one roller came off. The coupling-pin had been loose and had jerked out. But I managed to find another pin in the box and assembled the roller-piece again, and continued without further mishap. It was a nice afternoon and seagulls swirled about like a species of day-fireworks. Time passed quickly. So far so good.

  I was instructed to go when this field was done to a further one, a root field which had been folded by sheep, and needed knocking up with a cultivator. In due course I went there, found the cultivator, coupled it with the tractor without any query arising, and struck out. Since the method of cultivating is obvious and follows a simple rule of thumb, still so far so good. Then near the end of the day the tractor stopped. All that was wrong was that it had run out of paraffin oil. But as I had put in what I thought was a lot and had no idea how much it ate, I did not realize the cause of the stoppage, and kept urging it on. Then I tested the tank. There seemed to be a certain amount in it, and so I urged it on again for some jerky distance until at last I decided to get some fuel and fill up. Even then it still went jerkily and I had to keep adjusting the choke (about which I understood little). When I left it in the evening I wondered how it would go next day.

  I had cause enough to be apprehensive about this. For next day though it started up all right it would not pull the cultivator. It stalled each time at the strain. I was hopelessly held up. It was not firing properly; but – no one not knowing me will believe this – I did not examine the plugs! There was no rule of thumb for me, and I had no mechanical imagination, I could see no line of research for following out. At length the Van came rushing up, ’E leapt out in a flurry of annoyance, and Jimmy the mechanic who accompanied him whipped out a spanner and plug-twister from the box, and in a moment had taken out the plugs, held the dirty one up before us, cleaned it, put it back, and the tractor started up now and pulled properly – and the Van went off.

  The tractor was a good type, an International, but it badly needed overhauling, having been looked after very badly and used now by one person then another. Thus it needed tender treatment. A slight pushing out of the choke at the wrong time would be sufficient to smudge the plugs. I did not know this. My rough treatment of the choke on the first day had done harm, and though the tractor now went again it did not pull well as the day proceeded. Next morning it was as bad as the previous one, and I broke a plug while screwing it out, and there wasn’t a spare one. Hence more crisis. ’E’s sons came out, saying ‘Christ!’ The Van appeared, saying ‘Handy man! And look where you left the tractor last night – pointing uphill!’ Learning thus at the cannon’s mouth, as it were, it can be guessed that I picked up the tricks pretty fast!

  Unfortunately there was always a new thing to pick up regarding this tractor. For the next thing was that it refused to start in the morning. I would leave it in the evening after it had been going all right, but next day it would not start. Even when I took out all the plugs and cleaned them, it wouldn’t. One starts up these tractors on petrol, then switching over to paraffin. It was not easy to lay one’s hands on petrol here, and I was always in danger of running out of the small quantity I had in the little petrol tank before I could get started up – in which case I would be floored again and have to face Van and boys saying ‘Christ!’ It was necessary to take the plugs to pieces and clean their insides (that was the secret) and I hadn’t convenient tools for this at first. Thus you can imagine I had fun and games during these early days. My only merit in matters of this kind is that I don’t make the same mistake twice – not on my life! Time certainly never dragged at all now. Indeed I hardly stopped for the morning meal of ‘lunch’, being too anxious to get on and make a show before something held me up, and in case the tractor wouldn’t start again if I stopped it and let it get cold.

  I was extricated from many of my early problems and mishaps by Harold, the chief tractor-driver. He was a leisurely chap who took things pretty calmly, though like everyone else, on catching sight of the Van approaching, would display an uncommon earnestness of demeanour and concentration of effort. Now in his late twenties he was already an old hand, having started very young and ploughed with horses long before he took on tractor work. It was clear that he had a good life on this farm and enjoyed it. But the most I ever heard him say was that he ‘didn’t mind the binder’ and I think he ‘didn’t mind’ ploughing. He never took any holidays. He was always about to do so, but never did. He could be very agreeable or very rough, as the mood took him. Robert, always ready to get a rise out of anyone or suddenly shout at anyone who seemed fair game, never tried anything on with Harold. I knew it would not be wise to count on him helping me, but all the same he often did.

  When I got a roller stuck in a gateway, for instance, he would come and help me through before the Van appeared. It was instructive to contrast his traditional and leisurely movements – still more those of Robert – with the movements of ’E. For example, the Van would rush up while I was using the cultivator, say; it was perhaps necessary to put on some new tines or shoes to the cultivator. ’E would stride across the ground, head bent forward as he made straight for his objective; then down on his knees beside the implement, and with fast, strong, hurried, furious wrenching, knocking and twisting with pliers and hammer, do the job, assisted by me doing one item of the affair with another pliers, and accompanied by the boys who, imitating him in every way, would push and pull with immense earnestness. Then, having said what I was doing wrong, would dash off towards some other portion of the farm, where the signal would go up – ‘’E’s coming!’

  On two occasions a shaft of the roller broke. Curiously enough this was not held against me as these shafts had several times been to the blacksmith for mendings. But actually on the second occasion it was my fault. I had allowed a certain screw to get loose. Harold discovered this and made it clear in no uncertain terms, but did not tell ’E. I had not yet grasped the cardinal fact that a tractor-driver must keep his eye constantly upon all screws. Any one screw out of half a dozen on an agricultural implement is of supreme importance. A screw with its nut at one end looks rather like a spiral-fluted miniature Doric column such as upholds the Parthenon; and if it falls out it may do damage proportionate to the fall of a column. This is what I had to get into my head. All screws must be tight, and when you have tightened them then tighten them some more. I have often thought to myself – well that’s tight enough, anyway. But no, tug at it and you can improve it. It doesn’t seem necessary but it is; for the shaking of the instrument that it is holding together is equal to your strength in tightening the screw. Hence the tractor-driver must not content himself with looking ahead and watching his implement behind, but must keep his eye on all screws. He need not, as far as I can see, keep bobbing his head backwards and forwards all the time as some men do, but he must at intervals really test his joints. Thus then I write down this rule and nail
and screw it into my head – though many people think that my head itself has a screw loose.

  10 ‘Use Your Brains’

  At the best of times it was not easy to follow the orders given by ’E in the morning. I often had to get him to repeat them or would ask someone else who happened to have heard – preferably Dick. The latter experienced a certain difficulty himself in taking his orders and said to me that he simply seized upon ‘the main outline’ of what had been said and carried on from there. Dick’s manner while receiving orders was a perpetually repeated comedy. He regarded ’E as his mortal enemy, and when near him lost all his natural gaiety and good humour, becoming at once glum and silent. In the morning he would arrive and make for the stable without glancing his head towards ’E. While going towards it or coming from it, he would receive instructions, but he never took the slightest notice. Had he heard? I used to wonder at first. He had heard all right but merely refused to look in the direction from which the instructions proceeded. Or, out on the field, I would see him being told to do something. He would start off before ’E had finished speaking, his head bent very slightly in one direction which showed that he was really hearing the words that were now addressed to the back of his head.