Past those two new cottages which have been mentioned there runs a road which is a main thoroughfare.  Along this road during the year this change was worked there walked a mournful procession—­men and women on tramp.  Some of these were doubtless rogues and vagabonds by nature and choice; but many, very many, were poor fellows who had really lost employment, and were gradually becoming degraded to the company of the professional beggar.  The closing of collieries, mines, workshops, iron furnaces, &c., had thrown hundreds on the mercy of chance charity, and compelled them to wander to and fro.  How men like these on tramp must have envied the comfortable cottages, the well-stocked gardens, the pigsties, the beehives, and the roses of the labourers!

If the labourer has never gone up on the floodtide of prosperity to the champagne wages of the miner, neither has he descended to the woe which fell on South Wales when children searched the dust-heaps for food, nor to that suffering which forces those whose instinct is independence to the soup-kitchen.  He has had, and still has, steady employment at a rate of wages sufficient, as is shown by the appearance of his cottage itself, to maintain him in comparative comfort.  The furnace may be blown out, and strong men may ask themselves, What shall we do next?  But still the plough turns up the earth morning after morning.  The colliery may close, but still the corn ripens, and extra wages are paid to the harvest men.

This continuous employment without even a fear of cessation is an advantage, the value of which it is difficult to estimate.  His wages are not only sufficient to maintain him, he can even save a little.  The benefit clubs in so many villages are a proof of it—­each member subscribes so much.  Whether conducted on a ‘sound financial basis’ or not, the fact of the subscriptions cannot be denied, nor that assistance is derived from them.  The Union itself is supported in the same way; proving that the wages, however complained of, are sufficient, at any rate, to permit of subscriptions.

It is held out to the labourer, as an inducement to agitate briskly, that, in time, a state of things will be brought about when every man will have a small farm of four or five acres upon which to live comfortably, independent of a master.  Occasional instances, however, of labourers endeavouring to exist upon a few acres have already been observed, and illustrate the practical working of the scheme.  In one case a labourer occupied a piece of ground, about three acres in extent, at a low rental paid to the lord of the manor, the spot having originally been waste, though the soil was fairly good.  He started under favourable conditions, because he possessed a cottage and garden and a pair of horses with which he did a considerable amount of hauling.