Now comes the pressure on the corn village.  Much but not all of that pressure the inhabitants have brought upon themselves through endeavouring to squeeze the farmer too closely.  If there had been no labour organisation whatever when the arable agriculturist began to suffer, as he undoubtedly has been suffering, the labourer must have felt it in his turn.  He has himself to blame if he has made the pain more acute.  He finds it in this way.  Throughout the corn-producing district there has been proceeding a gradual shrinkage, as it were, of speculative investment.  Where an agriculturist would have ploughed deeper, and placed extra quantities of manure in the soil, with a view to an extra crop, he has, instead, only just ploughed and cleaned and manured enough to keep things going.  Where he would have enlarged his flock of sheep, or added to the cattle in the stalls, and carried as much stock as he possibly could, he has barely filled the stalls, and bought but just enough cake and foods.  Just enough, indeed, of late has been his watchword all through—­just enough labour and no more.

This cutting down, stinting, and economy everywhere has told upon the population of the village.  The difference in the expenditure upon a solitary farm may be but a trifle—­a few pounds; but when some score or more farms are taken, in the aggregate the decrease in the cash transferred from the pocket of the agriculturist to that of the labourer becomes something considerable.  The same percentage on a hundred farms would amount to a large sum.  In this manner the fact of the corn-producing farmer being out of spirits with his profession reacts upon the corn village.  There is no positive distress, but there is just a sense that there are more hands about than necessary.  Yet at the same moment there are not hands enough; a paradox which may be explained in a measure by the introduction of machinery.

As already stated, machinery in the field does not reduce the number of men employed.  But they are employed in a different way.  The work all comes now in rushes.  By the aid of the reaping machine acres are levelled in a day, and the cut corn demands the services of a crowd of men and women all at once, to tie it up in sheaves.  Should the self-binders come into general use, and tie the wheat with wire or string at the moment of cutting it, the matter of labour will be left much in the same stage.  A crowd of workpeople will be required all at once to pick up the sheaves, or to cart them to the rick; and the difference will lie in this, that while now the crowd are employed, say twelve hours, then they will be employed only nine.  Just the same number—­perhaps more—­but for less time.  Under the old system, a dozen men worked all the winter through, hammering away with their flails in the barns.  Now the threshing-machine arrives, and the ricks are threshed in a few days.  As many men are wanted (and at double the wages) to feed the machine, to tend the ‘elevator’ carrying up the straw to make the straw rick, to fetch water and coal for the engine, to drive it, &c.  But instead of working for so many months, this rush lasts as many days.