And small wonder, I thought, if any sense of harmony survives down there!
Of speaking and singing I heard more than enough during my first winter (1905-6), as it was a time of political agitation. The excitement was, however, mostly in the towns. Fishermen and miners were almost to a man on the Liberal side, led by their ministers, who were eagerly looking to have their revenge on the Church; while those on the land were, despite their Methodism, on the other side, but with small hopes of winning. They appeared to be in a reticent and somewhat sullen humour: it was hard to get a word out of them, but I one day succeeded with a farmer I was slightly acquainted with. I found him in a field mending a gate, and after telling him the news and guessing what his politics were, I teased him with little mocking remarks about the way things electoral were going, until he was thoroughly aroused, and burst out in a manner that fairly astonished me. Yes, he was a Conservative, he angrily exclaimed. Being on the land, what else could he be? Only a blind fool or a traitor to his fellows could be anything different if he got his living from the land. He didn't knaw the man as thought different to he. But they--the farmers--were going to be beat, he knew well enough. 'Twas bound to be, seeing the other side had the numbers. They had the town people--small tradesmen, fishers, workmen and all them that passed their time leaning against a wall with their hands in their pockets--the unemployed as they was called now-days. We didn't use to call them _that!_ The Liberals with their promises had got them on their side. What did they think they'd get? To live without work? That pay would be better, clothes and food cheaper--miners to get two pounds a week, or three, 'stead of thirty shillings; a fisherman to get twice as much for his fish, so that after a good catch he'd be able to sit down and rest for six months? No more work for we! Yes, many expected that. Anyhow they'd all git something because 'twas promised 'em--better pay, better times. But you can't have something for nothing, can you? Who's to pay for it then? They don't bother about that; 'twill have to come somehow--maybe from the land. Yes, the land's to pay for everything! Did any of them town idlers, them that worked a day or two once a week or month--did they knaw what the land gave? Did they knaw what 'tis to git up before dawn every day, Sundays as well, and work all day till after dark, all just for a bare living? But you work the land, they'll say, you don't own it--'tis the landlords we've got to get it out of. 'Twill come out of the profits. Will it? That's just what I'd like to knaw. We pay a pound or two an acre with all the rough and stones, and we pay tithes. And what do the landlords git? There's rich and poor and big and little among 'em, the same as in everything. If he owns a hundred thousand acres he's well off, however little the land pays. But what if he owns only a few small farms, like most of them in these parts--can he live and bring up his sons to be anything better than labourers, or just what we farmers are, out of it? If I owned this land myself and had to pay all my landlord pays, I don't think I'd be much better off than I am now. I'd have to work the same. What do they mean, then, by saying the land will pay? I knaw--I'll tell you. It means that the land's here and can't be hidden and can't be taken out of the country, and them who own it and them that make their living out of it can be robbed better than anybody else. That's how them that are not on the land will get their something for nothing.