It might fairly be asked how ‘Patriotism’ works in with all this, and ‘putting all they have into the land’, and ‘willing work for the war effort’, and ‘splendid national service’, and other BBC phrases. Not very well really. I mean the phrases don’t fit in too well. For the agricultural labourer, in war as in peace, is cut off from the world. He lives on a desert island. He is cast on a far shore. Upon him all the world rests: yet that world is to him a dream, and they are dream figures that he sees from his field passing on the road. They pay no heed to him, they think of him and thank him not at all. Who can blame him for not being able to think in national terms? Patriotism is not an unreal thing even when one’s locality is not immediately threatened, it can be felt in masses such as you get in factories (or can it?). But not on the wide field, not amongst the cows, not under the pressure of the egoism of farmers. The labourer has nothing to prime him save his own ego and its persistent claims for a little freedom and pleasure.
19 What a Weed Is
It became hot again, though with occasional showers which held up the hour of haymaking. I was called now to a different job – that of hoeing some very small kale shoots in a very dirty field.
In towns men have become so far removed from the soil that when we hear that a man has soiled his hands we know that he is suspected of a crime. But in the country soil is the acme of cleanliness and is only regarded as dirty if it has weeds on it. (And of course soil is so far from being dirty that if you cut your hand it is a good tip to plug the wound with a decent piece of earth, when it heals in no time.) What is a weed exactly? It is any plant we are interested in. It can be a ‘flower’. Would you not call the scarlet pimpernel a flower? or the eyebright? or the poppy? But a field of kale, though it glitter with the scarlet, the red, the blue, the yellow and other shades of pretty flowers, is disgustingly dirty to the agricultural eye, and would still be considered as such though the rose, the lily, or the daffodil lifted their petals to the sun.
A weed may be considered as an exemplar of the paradox that the good that we would we do not, and the evil that we would not that we do. We do our best to care for the good plants, we spurn the evil weeds; but before we know where we are, the latter have sprung up unbidden and choked our plants. No one puts weeds amongst the kale, and yet they appear; while no kale would appear unless we put it there. Knock out the weeds, and after a shower they will rise up again. Knock out your plant, and even replant it, and it will die. In a word, weeds are tough plants, and that is doubtless why we cannot eat them, and why those we can eat are delicate and not fit for competition. Hence it is considered that only a lunatic will treat weeds as garlands. That is why King Lear, blasted in the storm, was found with docks, hemlock, nettles, darnel, and rank fumiter in his hair.
Thus hoeing is of great importance, otherwise many a field of kale, swedes, or mangolds will become submerged and all your work will be undone. Weeds should be treated, said William Cobbett, exactly as the Duke of Wellington treated the faction called the Whigs in I828. But I fear I must acknowledge that there were times when I treated some of the smaller ones in the manner of Lord Nelson who deliberately turned a blind eye on another occasion.
The kale shoots were miserably small and weak-looking, and it was impossible to believe that anything could come of them. ‘Best thing ’e could do would be to plough them in, I allow,’ was Robert’s comment when he saw the field. But ’E knew better. So I carried on at what seemed a hopeless job. The ground was hard, the hoe light and blunt, and I made very little show. When ’E appeared and looked at my ‘cut’ he said that if I were doing it on a piece-work basis I would do a good deal more. You’re telling me, I felt inclined to reply. For no one in his senses on the staff of any farm would go at the pace of professional piece-workers. These latter gentlemen provide an intimidating spectacle. Every yard covered is so much £.s.d. They know nothing of back-ache, having developed rubber spines. Time never drags for them, space being their only concern. They choose this method of work, preferring to go hard during certain months so as to be independent during others, and their own masters at all times. Some never take off, since work normally can be found all the year round: hedging and ditching by the chain in winter, sowing by the acre in April, dipping sheep by the score in May, hiring by the acre in harvest-time, thatching by the square, dressing mangolds by the acre or load, then hedging again. It would seem therefore that a farmer would be well advised to employ piece-workers for a job like hoeing, at any rate. But there is one snag, for their sole object is to cover so much space, and this can be done quickest by skimping the work and leaving in the smaller weeds. Thus the farmer, having paid a lot, finds the weeds still coming up in plenty – certainly here ‘not worth the money’.
The day-labourer is careful not to compete with the pace of piece-workers. Given a certain job to do, for instance, he makes sure of not doing too much on the first day; for if he takes a big cut and does a particularly good day’s work, he will be expected to do likewise tomorrow. He is not going to expose himself to the phrase ‘you haven’t done much today, have you?’ if he can help it, when the boss appears. When ’E came out to me he said, ‘Give me the hoe and I’ll show you,’ and then proceeded to give a demonstration which left nothing to be desired in either thoroughness or speed. He carried on for two minutes and then went off. The implication being that I should imitate this pace for the rest of the day. All bosses and foremen perform this exhibition, and while no one has the heart to spoil their comedy, it is held in derision by all the men.
20 The Real Inequality
Again the fresh beauty of the morning! The yellow flaming flag of the laburnum falls to the ground; the gorgeous candelabra of the chestnut trees have long since guttered and gone out. All effected at the rate of theatrical scene-shifting, it seems, as I cycle through the passing show. But the copper-beech in the rectory garden reminds me of the constancy of time. Its great trunk rooted in history; its leaves bathed in the memory of a thousand summers; the sunless branches in its tented shade, the slow dripping of the raindrops down into the glorious gloom of the soaking sod – are in themselves the Remembrance of Things Past.
. . . Thus in the early morning is the heart raised and the head cleared, as one steps on to the field of kale. And for an hour or so it is possible to remain in this frame of mind. But not for many hours. The morning goes well enough, but the afternoon sees a different man; the monotony of the task (give me that tractor again!), and the aching of the back, begin to numb the mind until it gradually stops working altogether, like a watch breaking down, and by the time evening approaches you feel little better than a rubbish heap of rotting thoughts, so that a hollow ghost stands where in the radiance of the morning had stood the living man. By that time one idea seemed the only true happiness on earth – the idea of just sitting down. Merely to get on to my bicycle and sit down on it – will I ever forget the pleasure! Yet I shall, that’s the queer thing. There is nothing we forget so quickly as physical sensations – look how quickly people forgot what they felt when being bombed, and how women forget the labour of childbirth. In the years to come I shall often wish I were on the field, even the hoeing field. But for how long at a stretch? I will not remember what it was like, what the conditions for being on the field are. I shall never then be able to experience the excessive pleasure of sitting down, or of eating, for no man can force himself willingly – unless he owns a small farm – to work on beyond what he feels endurable.
This particular field was at its worst stage, the kale being small and the weeds large, so that they often both came up together. Alf joined me now and kept calling it ‘’ospital work’. He would plug along for a quarter of an hour perhaps, then say – ‘Well, it’ll soon be Christmas’; then have another go and soon stop again and say – ‘Anyway it’ll soon be Christmas’. Then he’d say ‘I must go and see a man about a dog’ and disappear for a short time. Farm work, he said, made you need plenty of sleep. I asked him what time he went to bed,
and he said eight-thirty, sometimes nine, and often eight. He spoke of conditions in other professions, the sociality and also ‘good grub in them canteens, not wot it is ’ere, where you get nothing to eat’ (true word in war-time on the land!). Often enough, he said, the time is well spread out, there being an hour and a half for dinner, and a break for tea in the afternoon – ah, if there were a break for tea while hoeing! Would money thereby be lost? Personally, I think not.
Sometimes it was necessary to stoop down on one’s knees in order to deal with some of the plants by finger. I mentioned to Alf that I felt rheumatism in my knees when I did this. Let me hand down his remedy to posterity. Whenever he got rheumatism, he said, in knees, elbow, or anywhere else, he simply rubbed in petrol and in a short time was cured.
This field was near to ’E’s house, which had plenty of windows looking out over the farm. Alf didn’t like them a bit, didn’t approve of windows. ‘You know why ’e’s put them there,’ he said, ‘to see wot’s going on. That’s wot they’re there for.’ A little far-fetched, I thought, as an architectural critique, since one top window would do as a spy-hole. Still it is true that many farmers do like to have their houses built on the highest point, so that they can see without being seen. It is natural. And effective. They may never look from the windows, but the worker in the field feels uncomfortable if he is in sight of them – great eyes watching him if he sits down or makes an early get-away. For if the boss isn’t there, the family is, and one or other member will notice and tell.
While riding home I reflected upon Alf’s time of going to bed between eight and nine o’clock. And this tallies more or less with the bedtime of other agricultural labourers, though some make it a fairly regular nine-thirty. It is necessary if they are to rise early. That is to say they have no free time. This difference in length between the working hours of those on the land and those in the towns, is what has impressed me most; nothing, absolutely nothing, has impressed me more than this; and when I compare the hours of work put in by these agricultural labourers and those put in by professional men known to me, I say – Here is the real Inequality. It is not Wages; it is not Housing; it is not Education which is the bottom inequality, but the distribution of working hours. If the planners improve housing, pay, and education without tackling this matter, then the mental and spiritual life of the agricultural workers will not advance one step.
Recently in a public speech, Mr Ellis Smith, MP, said that ‘There is no reason why, at the end of hostilities, anyone should have to work more than six hours a day for a five-day week.’ We need not suppose that he was thinking of agriculture or had ever heard of it; and to say that there is no reason why this should not be achieved immediately after the war is an amusingly empty phrase on the plane of practical politics; but as a general statement it is sound, and must be true. For every year we go on saving labour; and to save labour and yet keep the labourers working the same hours as before is an unendurable absurdity.
It is clear that the world would be saved if all men did work they loved doing. Such men have no time for quarrelling, for fighting, or for money-mania. There will always be few such men. We can never aim to build a society composed of such. But we could aim towards the ideal of work which engages nearly the whole man. In some factories today men use just – one finger! Not the body, not the mind – just one finger! But there is an occupation which can engage nearly the whole man and which if there were time given for the development of the mind, would satisfy the psychological needs of hundreds of thousands of people. This is agriculture. It could provide scope for bodily, mental and spiritual development. These are bald statements. I do not seek to embellish them, they are unquestionable.
When I got home I heard John Barbirolli conducting Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony, over the air. What was agriculture for, it seemed to me, except that such a thing as that symphony and the playing of it should be made possible? To make bread so that it shall be possible for mankind to have more than bread and hear the scripture of the kings; to listen to a Beethoven, a Sibelius, a Tchaikovsky, uttering some far message of paradox and joy.
21 Haymaking and Combustion
The weather now made it possible for us to plunge into haymaking. I was soon to become thoroughly implicated in hay. Our first field was composed of sainfoin – for nowadays meadows are seldom composed of a miscellanea of grasses; they are crops. We went out and drew up in the field with full modern equipment, and went hard at it, the motor cars dashing full steam ahead. For hay is no longer carried; it is swept in. Two cars each with an attached sweep, feeding an elevator without cessation, can gather up fifteen to twenty acres in a day. All done in a great hurry. None of the scented peace and quiet which we used to associate with haymaking. The agricultural labourer seldom praises anything, or admits that he enjoyed anything in the way of work; and none, save the old, object to the introduction of any mechanical device. But haymaking provided an exception to this – here at any rate. One and all, they not only hated the present job, but glorified the past. ‘We made hay in they days,’ they said. It was regarded as a kind of holiday time then, their families in the field, great picnics, not to mention lots of beer flowing. Actually and truly a merry time. Now all swept away by the hay-sweep.
Thus we went ahead. The cars were driven by ’E’s daughter and one of the boys. The carter kept the tiddler going across the field, the sails of its wheel sweeping up the swathes into long mounds convenient for taking up by the sweeps. Harold, Alf, Dick, and Jimmy received the hay at the foot of the elevator, while Robert built the rick assisted by myself and ’E or a land girl.
I speedily found that ricking under these conditions was no picnic. If four men on the ground are piling the grass on to the elevator, the man receiving it at the top has plenty to hand on. If I stood too near or there was a wind the stuff fell on my head – and at the end of the season I calculated that I had received about fifty acres of hay on my hat. I found that the material, from a hauling-about point of view, was more like wire than my former conception of hay. This was real exercise – but far from boring! Harold, who though officially the tractor-driver, was always one of the best workers at any other job he did, liked to have his game with me. He set the pace at heaving the hay on to the elevator, and catching my eye, would, with a broad grin, in unison with the others, send up a succession of small haycocks in an endeavour to submerge me. On one occasion later on, when we had to build a new wing on to our rick and I was the only person at all near the elevator, a special effort was made to drown me. It was nearly successful, for failing to remove the first lot, the subsequent waterfall came on top of me and I almost disappeared. But by sheer force I rose above the surface, and both on this occasion and on all others managed to keep my head above hay.
Making hay seems to me to be about the most tricky of all the agricultural operations. A weight of decision rests upon the farmer as upon a general in a campaign. If the hay gets a lot of rain it will be spoilt, as everyone knows, though I did not realize until I experienced it that it gets so black that you look like a chimney-sweep after dealing with it. It can be spoilt even easier by sunshine, a thing I had not realized at all; for if it gets too much of it, all the good will be scorched out. And if, in order to avoid this, you lift it too soon and it is slightly green, then the rick may move away, disappear from the field altogether: its means of locomotion being the same as that of an engine – internal combustion. It will begin to heat, getting hotter and hotter until it explodes, catches fire and is seen no more. Such is the marvellous chemistry of the earth, that if we play with her we play with fire.
It happened that our first rick caused trouble in this manner. It had seemed dry enough, but next day we found that it was getting extremely hot. So much so that ultimate combustion was feared. In order to prevent this and let the air in, we dug a hole from the top right down through it. The odour was most remarkable – like very strong strawberries, I thought. But no comparison will describe its richness – at another ti
me I thought it smelt like beer. We took turns with the hay knife, jumping down into the smoking crater. As we got lower we found it very hot down there, and none of us could stand it for more than a few minutes, and we came up pouring with perspiration. It was a fine morning but with a very cold wind, and the change of temperature after one’s shift at this strange mining operation was quite alarming from a chill-catching point of view. We dug two of these shafts, and before building on top again, laid hurdles across the pit-heads. Just before this was done I got down into the shaft we had finished first, being rather fascinated by it. While I was down there Robert began to put a hurdle across the top. I pretended not to notice this until he had put it on. Then I shouted out as if fearfully alarmed at my caged condition, and ’E, much amused, said ‘Collis has got left behind!’ ‘Let him bide!’ shouted Robert, pretending to be angry, ‘Let him bide! Some volks are better down under, I allow,’ and threw a bit of hay on top of the hurdle, at which I shouted – ‘Hey, Robert, I’m suffocating!’ At which, with a great show of relenting, he opened the hurdle for me to climb out, saying – ‘I reckon we can’t afford to lose ’e quite yet’, and so I emerged amidst general laughter. For, if work was going forward all right, ’E was by no means averse to a bit of fun, and actually liked an agreeable atmosphere far more than others realized, and was totally unaware of the nervous atmosphere he himself created. (He had two sons, as I have mentioned, and one of them, Reggie, inherited his father’s suppressed sense of fun, while the other, John, afraid of being left behind in life’s struggle, was in such deadly bossing earnest that it was with consternation that one watched him.)
The Worm Forgives the Plough Page 14
