history of benefit clubs and the calculations of actuaries, that the
agricultural labourer, out of his amount of wages, cannot put by a
sufficient monthly contribution to enable him to receive a pension
when he becomes old and infirm. But that is not the slightest reason
why he should not save small sums year by year, which, in course of
time, would amount to a nice little thing to fall back upon in case
of sickness or accident. There are many aged and deserving men who
have worked all their lives in one place and almost upon one farm,
and, at last, are reduced to the pitiful allowance of the parish,
occasionally supplemented by a friendly gift. These cases are very
painful to witness, and are felt to be wrong by the tenant-farmers.
But one person cannot entirely support them; and often it happens
that the man who would have done his best is dead--the old employer
for whom they worked so many years is gone before them to his rest.
If there were but a little organization such cases would not pass
unnoticed.

Certain it is that the tendency of the age, and the progress of
recent events, indicates the coming of a time when organization of
some kind in rural districts will be necessary. The labour-agitation
was a lesson of this kind. There are upheaving forces at work among
the agricultural lower class as well as in the lower class of towns;
a flow of fresh knowledge, and larger aspirations, which require
guidance and supervision, lest they run to riot and excess. An
organization of the character here indicated would meet the
difficulties of the future, and meet them in the best of ways; for
while possessing power to improve and to reform, it would have no
hated odour of compulsion. The suggestions here put forth are, of
course, all more or less tentative. They sketch an outline, the
filling up of which must fall upon practical men, and which must
depend greatly upon the circumstances of the locality.

THE IDLE EARTH

The bare fallows of a factory are of short duration, and occur at
lengthened intervals. There are the Saturday afternoons--four or
five hours' shorter time; there are the Sundays--fifty-two in
number; a day or two at Christmas, at Midsummer, at Easter.
Fifty-two Sundays, plus fifty-two half-days on Saturdays; eight days
more for _bona-fide_ holidays--in all, eighty-six days on which no
labour is done. This is as near as may be just one quarter of the
year spent in idleness. But how fallacious is s