The Worm Forgives the Plough

by John Stewart Collis

  ‘I thought you said – ’ I began.

  ‘You’re not giving me instructions!’ he roared, ‘I’m giving them to you.’

  ‘Not so hard this side!’ shouted further agricultural advisers from the wagon, who were careful to deliver sheaves in plenty.

  Under these ideal conditions I proceeded. The Israelites, we are told in the Bible, were in the deplorable position of having ‘to make bricks without straw’. I never understood what straw had to do with it, nor do I now; but here I was attempting to build with bricks of straw and with no cement. My tendency to keep the sheaves too far in became too strong for me, especially on one side, and my rick began to slope inward Gothically as if I were already roofing. Then in a too great effort to check this, my architecture began to take after Giovanni Gambuti who inspired the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Meanwhile the sheaves were handed to me far quicker than I would have ever dared hand them to Robert. And at last, under protest, I was prevailed upon to give in, and must chalk up the truth that I did not succeed in this venture. The pressure was too much. It is a good thing to learn under pressure, no doubt. Bertrand Russell said that his parents taught him to swim by holding him upside-down in deep water; but he added that he could not recommend this as the best method for everyone. In the same way I daresay I could have found easier conditions under which to build my first rick.

  41 Meditation in the Old Garden

  We reached our last wheat field now, and only two fields of oats and the hundred-acre barley lay ahead. Owing to a faulty packing of food one morning I had gone short at lunch, not daring to be short at dinner with the afternoon in front. As the morning advanced I began to feel exceedingly hungry, and was afraid even to look at my watch lest its progress would be too discouraging, and refused to give my well-known signal (using arms as clock-hands) to Dick whose sovereign thought was always the progression of time – it ruled his mind like a king. Unfortunately it worked out that it would be possible to finish the rick in the morning if we went on a bit longer than usual – which we did.

  Actually I was glad of this because the next field to be tackled was right away at the other side of the farm – beyond the Big House. I saw that I would be able to have my rest and food in the garden. So when the others had gone I took a short cut and made for the Big House and entered the Old Garden. It was not open to the public, but it was open to the private, so to speak. No one seemed to be in residence at the moment. The door through the wall in the garden was not locked and I went in. I sat down on a seat backed by the high wall and fronted by a pool of lawn cliffed by ancient trees. Here I now ate my much postponed meal. I enjoyed it so much that when finished, and with cigarette in hand, I felt a great sense of physical well-being. It is not very often that one gets this feeling after agricultural work, but if the weather has been hot and the work hard-going as opposed to a slow drag, it is possible to feel really well afterwards. When this happens the mind sometimes attains considerable liberty and can move without hindrance. And, in my own case, as I had been doing what is called ‘an honest day’s work’, my mind enjoyed still greater freedom. I could regard phenomena, natural or social, without guilt, without anxiety, without ideas conceived by others, without for a moment having to attain to the condition of that strangest of all birds, the bird with only one wing, Left or Right, the bird that cannot soar upwards and take a bird’s-eye view.

  In this mood I fell into contemplation of the Old Garden. Aloof in the melancholy shade of history, it gave out peace and cast the ancient spell. How did it come into existence? By some men being rich and others poor, by inequality, by privilege. Entering into the era of equality, shall we then throw them open to the public? The moment we do so they will become – something else. They will, no longer be gardens: they will be parks. Instantly their essence will evaporate and they will no longer be what they were. We must face the logic; the moment privilege becomes public it ceases to be privilege, for you cannot have a privileged many – they would not then be privileged. So our question is – Shall we have a privileged few? Well, the many do not like this kind of place anyway; secluded reverie is alien to them, quiet reflection wholly unsought – they prefer the definite peopled park. But they also enjoy on occasion the parade of circumstance and the pomp of power. And I said – Let us not throw everything away in the name of Equality. Let there be privilege! Let there be pride! Let there be palaces though they be built out of the pennies of the poor! The time is coming when the flood-tide of the multitudinous Many shall flow through all the gates and into all the courts of pleasure; but even then, let there be here and there a too favoured Few, so that scattered throughout the land there may yet remain, enwalled from the world’s babel, the sequestered place, the pool of silence, the repository of peace, into which the wanderer may come and bathe in the spirit of the past and hold converse with the mighty dead!

  While lifted up into this pleasant mood as I sat in the old garden, I heard the distant rumble of wheels. I knew exactly what that sound meant. It was the approach of our wagons making towards that other field which we were to carry in the afternoon, and I must now get up and move out into the medias res of agriculture. And as I was happy in my thoughts at this hour, and in this place, so was I happy in that thought; for whereas the time had been when the rumble of wagon-wheels would have meant nothing to me save the faint murmur from a world of labour in which I had no share and yet upon which all my ways depended, now, though I might dwell for a brief period in the Old Garden and the Ivory Tower of my soul, I must presently depart from thence, and enter into and take my place at the centre of the world’s work. And in this also there was happiness. In this there was freedom.

  42 Imperfect Scenes

  The weather broke. Not badly, but just enough to hold us up and make it necessary to turn the stooks of oats. ’E took hold-ups caused by the weather very well, I thought. He didn’t let it make him lose his temper. And though we had more to do and fewer of us to do it than at many of the farms round about, we were ahead of most with our harvesting. ’E was respected in the neighbourhood as a man who at any rate got things done. Looking at him, I wondered what such a man would do under complete State Ownership. Would not this strong natural force be lost? Men who are out for themselves in agriculture, and not for the State, do more work and hence serve the State better than those who work for the State. A post as mere Manager would never engage the full force of these men; it would be largely wasted. This would be a bad thing if we go on the assumption that efficiency is the aim of life.

  The sun returned and we carried on again after first spreading the hiles. One morning while I was engaged at this I found a dead hare which I picked up and put in my bag to take home for consumption. Next day while we were starting another rick, ’E began to talk about someone having been seen with a hare, the implication being that ‘someone with a dog’ had caught a hare. ’E was a tenant of the Squire who was much against there being any dogs about that might interfere with his shooting. ‘Don’t let the Squire see thy dog loose,’ Robert had said to me, ‘or he’ll have him shot, I allow’ – for Robert didn’t approve of my having a dog as well as he. And now ’E brought up this subject of the hare and said that the Squire would be ‘creating’. I said I had picked up a dead hare. He said he ‘didn’t know nothing about it’, but that he had heard but ‘wasn’t saying nothing’ as to who had informed him, but anyway if I wasn’t careful the Squire would be creating.

  I failed to take all this with the proper seriousness, and was inadequately impressed either by the Squire’s alleged creative powers or about the hush-hush concerning who told the tale. I knew who must have told (not Robert), but said, with the maximum of indiscretion, ‘the only person within sight was Robert’.

  It was as if I had put a match to a piece of petrol-soaked paper. Up went Robert in flames. I could hardly blame him, for it was a poor joke on my part; but he certainly got excited, yelling and stamping with rage at this scandalous imputation, finally bringing up the occasion
when my dog had been seen worrying his sheep, to which he had a Witness (the same being Harold who now looked appropriately sheepish). I’m no hand at shouting-matches and could say little under the circumstances except ‘the trouble with you Robert is that you can’t take a joke’ which didn’t do much good. ‘Joke be b’d,’ he said. But the thing then petered out, and I said no more, leaving bad alone, and not trying to add to or quench the flames.

  By seven-thirty we had finished the rick, and with half an hour in hand we trekked off to another field and started a rick at once, for some of the others had gone ahead and loaded the wagons. At one time a loaded horse-drawn wagon stood waiting by the rick till we were ready to move it in. When we were ready we found that the horse wasn’t. He had decided not to move, just refusing definitely to bring the wagon alongside. ’E got off the rick, went up to the horse, and saying – ‘Up you sod!’ jabbed the wooden end of his prong into the horse’s ribs. It gave a leap forward, snapping the harness in four or five places and breaking clean out of the wagon. ’E gave it several more jabs, though this did nothing to improve the situation, since the wagon now remained exactly where it was before. Someone had to go and get fresh harness, and a considerable interval elapsed before the wagon at length moved forward under the now docile horse – Harold leading him forward and giving him a friendly pat on the nose and neck.

  This brought us to the end of an imperfect day. The following day also closed imperfectly. We were working at a rick near the end of the afternoon when the sky blackened and rain approached. It would be necessary to throw a tarpaulin over the rick. Harold and Dick were feeding the elevator. Suddenly Robert exploded. With extreme fury he yelled down to Dick – not saying, Get the tarpaulin, but Why the etc. etc., hadn’t he got it? as if Dick had refused to do something he had been told. Dick’s gorge rose and he didn’t budge – at least not until he was told to do so by ’E . After this had been done and we had put the tarpaulin over the rick, Robert, still in a rage, advanced towards Dick with his prong as if to lay him out, while pronouncing an oath of the utmost extremity. Dick stood his ground, hurling back a drastic imprecation; while Harold, who was watching the business carefully, placed himself close behind Robert, fully intending to strike him down if he really did raise his hand against Dick. But Robert suddenly put up his prong and walked away.

  Thus nerves began to get rather on edge as we neared the end of the harvest. The truth is Robert was afraid of rheumatism if he got caught in that oncoming rain, for on the rick we were not within reach of our coats. It was therefore very irritating not to have the tarpaulin fetched at once instead of having more sheaves sent up on the elevator. Robert was a fairly good-hearted man and he did not bear ill-will towards Dick after this, nor towards me about the hare – in fact he brought out some more cake for me. Indeed there was very little in the nature of sulking at this farm. ’E himself detested sulking and reacted at once when it was exhibited. ‘I like a clear atmosphere,’ he said, quite convinced that no man ever did more to promote a good atmosphere than he himself. Though Robert was not notable for his sense of humour or fun, he could laugh and I always got a tremendous loud guffaw out of him if I made some grousy kind of joke against something. But ’E, who treated him with great respect, never found him a good listener. Feeling the necessity sometimes to make some kind of remark while waiting between-times on the rick, ’E would speak about the market or the weather or even the war, but Robert hardly ever said more than ‘Aye’ or ‘That’s where it is’ without looking up. And on a certain occasion when loaders and rickers were all on a level, ’E actually told us a story, and a very good story, about a bull, but Robert neither listened nor laughed, and gazed firmly away into the distance.

  Elderly workers have always been critical of the younger generation. It is even more so today. Men who have worked very hard all their lives for a very small wage, now see young men, with a lamentable tendency to enjoy life, working less arduously for a far higher wage and with promises of security and what not in the future. Robert was a very skilled man, invaluable on any farm, who could do a number of jobs a good deal better than younger men; but it was clear to him that a grateful nation was going to repay him by making Dick’s life easier than his had been. Elderly working men and women are much less critical of the social system than of the younger generation.

  There was twenty minutes in hand before it would be officially time to leave off. So ’E found jobs for us. He instructed me to go to a certain distant field and pull up charlock. By the time I got there I had ten minutes before me, so I stood sheltering from the rain under the hedge and read a weekly paper, coming upon a review by Mr Raymond Postgate about a book on Detective Fiction, in the course of which he remarked that the photographs of the detective-writing authors betrayed, with one exception, definite criminal types: the one exception being thus mentioned, I supposed, so that if any of them reproached him for saying this, he could say it was the other fellow. Thus lost in these incredibly non-agricultural considerations, I now saw that it was five-thirty and I could depart.

  But as I went home I reflected upon the situation as it must now present itself to the employer. In the old days wages were so low that it cost three shillings less to keep a man than a horse. Those were the days, he feels. Now he is faced with a heavy wage bill, the difference within one generation being immense. Thus it is only human that he should now feel – as probably he seldom did in the past – that every minute wasted is money spent on nothing. As I write, wages are still going up. It might be a good thing if they stopped now. For the fact is that it will tell against workers if they go too far. Not only will it make the psychological atmosphere uncomfortable, but after five or six years of increased mechanization and increased knowledge on a farmer’s part of how many men he can do without, it will not be so easy to get a job on the land if wages are very high. Men who really want to work there, who would love it, may find themselves going round and being told by farmer after farmer that he ‘doesn’t want no more labour’.

  43 The Combine Harvester; The Leisure State

  We were now faced with the hundred-acre barley. It had been left too long in any case, so it was quite unnecessary to hile it. If the weather held we could cut and carry at the same time. But it was now late September and ’E decided to hire a combine to do half of it. And this was done. While we cut and carried fifty acres, a combine harvester did the other half.

  It is a remarkable machine. A truly triumphant invention. No open-minded person could fail to admire the scientific ingenuity of the men who contrived it. It is a binder and a thresher in one unit. The corn which has been cut and taken up by the binder is taken up but not bound; instead it passes through a threshing operation so that the grain pours straight into a tank which is emptied into sacks and deposited on a lorry once every round of the field. The straw, instead of being ricked, is spread over the field as it comes out by means of a revolving fan like the screw of a ship – so what with the usual binder-sails and this screw behind, the contraption looks like a sort of paddle-steamer whose element is corn. It is very neat: for when you examine it closely it seems astonishing that the job of the bulky thresher can be encompassed in so small a space.

  Thus it proceeds round the field, doing two jobs at once: that of cutting and threshing; and knocking out the necessity of three middle ones – carting, ricking, and thatching. An absolute godsend to the small farmer, I reflected, to the man who runs a hundred acres by himself with a son, a daughter, and one or two assistants. But in relation to big farms. I could not help feeling gloomy about its appearance. It is rather as if the Future had arrived before we were ready for it.

  It has just been reported that in liberated Ukraine, a girl combine-operator, Vera Panchonko, has received a Badge of Honour for harvesting two hundred and sixty acres in five days.

  Let us consider exactly what this means.

  There are few subjects harder to think out than this of machinery. An honest man will tend to be inconsistent. Ev
en Gandhi, who decided to oppose with the whole force of his mighty spirit the entry of the machine into India, made an exception in favour of Madame Singer’s sewing-machine. It is hard to be fully sensible on this subject. I shall tackle it here simply in relation to the land.

  The farm labourer, I repeat once again, is a mechanic, always, from the word go, having to deal with nuts and screws and overcome difficulties without help from outside. A very bad mechanic, farmers may complain, lazy, stupid, and careless concerning machines, and needing specialist help in all serious problems. Perhaps; but my point is that mechanism starts on the land; however amateurishly, there we started to conquer nature with ever more ingenious weapons. There the machine is a natural growth, seen at once as the right thing in the right place, and the man who deals with it seen as fully a man – in staring contrast to the man at the conveyor-belt in a factory. The machines have evolved in the country almost as naturally as flowers. First the spade – then the plough. First the rake – then the harrow. First the broadcast of seed (father of the BBC) – then the drill. First the flail – then the thresher. First arm-pitching – then the elevator. First the sickle, then the scythe, then the reaper, then the binder – now the combine.

  Each in turn is felt to be grand by those concerned. I have described my first potato-planting and how I would have rejoiced to see a machine-planter and also a better method of unploughing them than the old usages. Both have come along – our attention being fixed, each time, on the matter in hand, without any principle being considered. And now we come to the combine. It has arisen as organically and inevitably as all the others. It is as natural an object as the picturesque thresher – and more admirable.

  Yet here we pause. Here we reach a climax in our story. For though the combine has evolved as naturally as the other machines its effect is much greater upon the lives of the labourers. At one stroke it does away with harvesting – save for Vera Panchonko at the wheel. The age-long, centuries-old tradition of harvesting, of gathering up the year’s work, is taken away from the labourers. In their place the one big machine. We look across the land for human beings, and we see – one engine. And in its wake the bare field: no ricks meet the eye, and no work for thatchers or threshers.