He told me that he had been a farm labourer
in early life, and, subsequently, for six years a coachman in a
private livery stables in London. He lost his place through drink,
became a wanderer on the Embankment, was picked up by the Salvation
Army and sent to one of its Elevator paper-works. Afterwards, he
volunteered to work on the land at Hadleigh, where he had then been
employed for nine months. His ambition was to emigrate to Canada,
which, doubtless, he has now done, or is about to do. Such cases might
be duplicated by the dozen, but for this there is no need. _Ex uno
disce omnes_.
All the labour employed, however, is not of this class. For instance,
the next man to whom I spoke, who was engaged in ploughing up old
cabbage land with a pair of very useful four-year-olds, bred on the
farm, was not a Colonist but an agricultural hand, paid at the rate of
wages usual in the district. Another, who managed the tomato-houses,
was a skilled professional tomato-grower from the Channel Islands. The
experience of the managers of the Colony is that it is necessary to
employ a certain number of expert agriculturalists on the place, in
order that they may train the raw hands who come from London and
elsewhere.
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