“ALL FOR NOTHING."

Shannon News, 11 December 1923, Page 4

“ALL FOR NOTHING."

Being a Letter from William Woolbale, of Romney Peak," to Mrs. Alfred Asphalt, of Stucco Villa, i

My Dear Mrs. Asphalt,— ' 0 ■ I expect that you will look at the ‘envelope containing this letter for 'some time before opening it, trying 'to imagine from whom it, can be, and ‘ that on opening it you will very quickly glance at the last lines, not in search of the postcript, which of course I would not dream of omitting, but in : order to find out who has been writing to you at such inordinate length. Even iwhen you have that question you will, I fear, be at a loss to imagine what on earth it can all be about Let m’e hasten to explain. . My wife handed me your letter, from which we were both delighted to learn that you enjoyed vour visit to us, and the more so that your words s'eemed- to bold out some hopes that it may be repeated.-. But what has arrested my attention so much as to render this letter imperative, if I am to retain my peace of. mind, is this passage which I reproduce:—“Since my return I am afraid that I have almost become unpopular with iny friends because of the description I have given them of the benefits and advantages of country life. Considering the awful prices we have to pay for everything, when I tell them how you get all your firing and vegetables, and milk and butter and cream—we never think of it —and meat, and eggs, nil for, nothing, well really you know I can hardly wonder -that some of them can hardly keep their temper. V It is those three words “all for nothing ” that knocked me all of a heap, and since 1 , have haunted me so in-

sistently that I can only find even ia: partial relief by inflicting this letter upon you. If you will pass it round among your friends at least possible that they too may some relief. ' . . Coming -down to details —which 1 fear you will find prosaic—that firewood which I get “for nothing” is found half-a-mile from, the homestead, in the shape of logs. These have, to be; sawn into lengths by hand, split with a maul and wedges, and often with powder, and left several months to dry. The wood is then put on to a sledge, and dragged to the roadside. Owing to the nature of the country and the limited powers of an only (suitable'horse> this takes time. It .must then b’e put into a dray and drawn by the same ; horse over hilly country to the homestead. There it Is passed over the saw bench, and the plac’eNwhere a case of benzine and a gallon of oil are given' away with a ■ pound of tea was closed on my last visit to town. Indeed 28 cases which

I recently squeezed out of a board cost me; £49 16s —delivered at my shed. Sawn into stove lengths,, the wood must be loaded once more and carted to the backyard, where it is, split into suitable siz’es/and carried into the scullery, where it so impressed you. What these various operations cost I have never had the heart to work out, for the wood must be had though it cost three times as much; but I often wish that I lived where heat and light are supplied by turning a switch. It is not, only the time taken, but the fact that this time has to be filched from other work which I would much rather be doing. So with garden and dairy truck. These. occupy the time of one man who also splits the sawn firewood, kills the sheep, etc. You have to pay such a man two pounds a week, and you must give him board and lodging, worth at least a'nother pound. And in town you can buy quite a lot of vegetables, milk, butter, and even cream for three pounds a week. But in addition to this, I have to find interest on cost of cows and the land they occupy, cost of haymaking, and rent of hay paddock, renewal of rugs, replacement of dead or useless cows, all of which causes the “nothing” you speak of to assume a different appearance. As for meat, every sheep I kill could' be sold for over a pound for the meat alone. And for the greater part of the’ year economy is out of the question. We do not kill a leg of mutton, or a pound of chops. We kill a sheep, w'hieh must be consumed or it goes bad. Fortunately (?) for me my household is large enough— with the help :of the shepherd—to obviate much loss. But it is not large enough in summer to practice economy. In smaller establishments, for much of the. year, the cost of mutton is simply prohibitive. •Fowls, eggs, cheese, tinned meat, even rabbits and eels, have to take its place. In short, mv dear Mrs. ; Asphalt, the matters which you describe as costing ■ the farmer nothing, really cost him—when he can afford them at all —a good deal more than you pay in town.

Methinks I can hear the merry tinkling laugh which this evokes. “How ridiculous,” you rejoin, “for you to talk about paying a man three

pounds a week, when we all know that you do nothing of the kind. You look after the garden in your spare time. Your wife and the girls make the butter and bake that delicious bread. Your sons ‘ milk and kill and chop

firewood. You all get in the hay, and the firewood. In- fact you don’t spend a penny. ’ ’ Now that just exactly represents the “comfortable town view of the farmer.’ ’ As long as he' knocks out our rent interest on his capital and mortgages he is not supposed to get anything for his time. From my point pf view if a piece of work would cost a given sum if done by hired labour, and I do that work myself, I am entitled to say that it cost me (labour work) that amount. And I ; can assure you that when the House is in Committee Of Supply and the De- , partment of Dressmaking and Millinery comes up, the Minister in Charge of the Estimates is confronted by such reference to bread-baking and buttermaking as considerably increase the ..'amount which ultimately has to be voted. Suppose my girls went out to service and I had to hire others in their place, would you say that my housework was costing" me nothing? And it is the same with the ooys and myself. If I lived in town and put on a manager, the Government would' allow me to deduct his-'salary 1 and store bills from my v gross income; bat if I

do the work myself I cannot deduct a penny. As with' you “ the farmer is supposed to work for ' nothing, 5 5 no matter how long or arduously he may work for himself. In addition to these considerations every - article we purchase costs us as-much as you pay, plus 45 miles of transit by rail and 15 by waggon. /I was much interested in the account of your visit to the theatre. From what I have read I can quite believe it must have been most enjoyable. As you say, seven-and-six apiece is pretty high, but if I had, taken my wife, the first item -would have been a motor trip of 60 miles and back, say six gallons of benzine 28s 6d, then my four covers cost 1 £l2 apiece and will not exceed 3000 'miles; 1 say 38s* dinner, bed, breakfast, tips, garage, etc., 30s, or a trifle of £4 16s 6d before the tickets were bought. ‘Really you know, I prefer your case. I was glad to hear about the scholastic success of yOur boy, of whose'powers in the realm.of sport I had read. Here again you-seem to have the best of it, for I have; to pay pretty stiffly for boarding mine in town. I am indebted to one of my girls for what is really a brilliant idea. What do you think of an exchange of homes for Easter? Your husband' could, milk, split wood—l will provide it in the log s for him—dig potatoes, etc., “in his spare time,” and the rest of the day * f could : sit on a gate and .whistle,”- which I understand is how I spend my; time; while you could occupy yourself 1 in' making some of delicious bread and quite too charming butter, which we got in such abundance for nothing. We, for our part, would endeavour to sustain existence on such meagre supplies as we could wrest from town shops, in return for half a bucket of that gold with which the country districts are strewn. I hope you will seriously consider this suggestion, as should it. materialise, quite a number of people in this neighbourhood would be only too glad to follow suit. \

And now, my dear Mrs. Asphalt, I ami going to pay myself the compliment of believing that if I lay aside all semblance of banter and proceed to address you very faithfully •• indeed,you will acquit me of any intention whatever to wound or offend, and will read what I write in the spirit of its author, whose only aim is to allay misapprehension which he knows to exist and believes to exercise a most unfortunate 1 influence. ■ (

I have noticed with much regret, that of late years a very “bitter feeling has grown, up” between townspeople and country residents; and that this feeling is- growing in bitterness and intensity. I believe, too, that ninety per cept. of this bitterness is on the side of the town, and is engendered by the belief that while they are “sair hodden doon” by H.C.L., country people are free from its effects, and rolling in money,'for which they have done little or nothing; Country people, while disputing the latter proposition, are in no way bitter about it,' but think that 1 the town view is very unfair, and attribute it to misconceptions which; with your assistance, I should like to do what I can to allay. • In> the first place it is well for you to know that country people have a very strong feeling that you in the towns look down upon them as being of a somewhat inferior type; that in deference to some vague and mysterious element which you darkly refer to as your “ position, ” —whatever that may mepn—you are fully entitled, as by right, to certain benefits, privileges, apd advantages, which it would-be unreasonable to suppose country people either want or are entitled to. And the bitterness which many of you exhibit and express for us is but the deliberate expression of a deeply-rooted conviction that as we haVe elected or bden “compelled to go without certain thing, ” it is “ simply monstrous ’ ’ that we should be in possession of the money which they would have cost. Arid you are really indignant that after you have spent money on such things, the cornqr of your purse'from which you took that money should now be empty. For instance, your “ position ” demands that you keep a couple of maids; My wife and daughters have to go without. At the end of the year you bewail the fact that you have not the money which they cost you. But you have had their services. Upon the occasion of. your visit to the theatre you had two alternatives. You could go at a cost of 15s, or you could stop at home. We could not go for fifteen shillings, much as we should have liked to do so. During the ten days that have elapsed since you left us, I have not taken a coiri out of my waistcoat' pocket. Ask your husband if he .can say the same. He will not answer you, but watch his face. Now we do not in any way grudge you the pleasure you enjoyed at the theatre. I do not feel resentful because your husband joins a friend or- so, in a whisky and soda at eleven; lunches at the club; has a game of billiards after lunch; plays bridge from five to six; and goes to the theatre every time anything worth seeing is on. ' Why then should he grumble because I have the money' these things would have cost me? We both started from the same mark. His income has been fully as large as mine. But “cake has formed no part of my diet, ’ ’ whereas he has. had it with every meal. Is it surprising, or any just cause of complaint, that my cupboard should shpw a fair accumulation of cake, whilst his-is relatively bare? Money, being an. exact equivalent for what it will purchase, if he has always had the one, is it fair to regard me as a criminal because I am found to be ' in possession of the other? Because that is the exact position.

Nor is . this feeling confined to any one class or section of the community. My shepherd and his wife appear to have'about a dozen brothers and sisters apiece, if I may judge from the stream of visitors who are continually passing through his house. And while we swing the billy at 12 o ’clock, he confides to me that he is just about fair fed up with such of them as come from town. They are always grumbling and whining 1 about their own hard lot, and 'throwing off : at him ; ovcr his more fortunate ! position; : so that 1 is sick

of listening to them. But when he asks why they do not forsake their miserable )guxroun<dings and embrace lal the advantages of country life, it appears that they are not prepared to •bury themselves—-not just yet, thank you very kindly all the same. It appears that he was helping a sister with payments on her house, and when he remarked that she was better, or more expensively dressed than his wife was, the result was a complete rupture of friendly relations, which he appears to accept with something not at all unlike philosophy. Like those higher up, these people are slaves to the same, exacting sense of “what is due to their position.” My shepherd’s opinion of them and their position finds': expression-in remarks somewhat lacking in repose. But he is looking forward to the next visit, for I have supplied him with a few wellworn phrases, which he thinks may serve hisf need. “You cannot eat your cake and have it too.” “A penny saved is a penny gained.” “Many a mickle makes a muckle,” are some of them; nor, will he fail to point out the want of harmony between 1 envy of country people and contemnt for country life. ' We in the country know all about H.C.L. in its relation to the necessaries of life. But we / have a strong feeling that H.C.L. is very largely C.H.L. If ou will persist in spending money on absolute non-essentials you must inevitably lessen the number of people employed in the- production of essentials. If you will insist upon spending money not for any comfort it will bring, but purely,’ simply and sojely for the exclusive purpose of proving to other people that you can afford to spend it, your complaint that you no longer have that r money command will not evoke muck sympathy.- It you will insist upon paying a man fifteen guineas for a few flimsy rags and scraps of tawdry tinsel- which you would ' spurn with contempt if they were’priced at fifteen shillings, you can hardly expect him to devote himself to the production of a really serviceable wrap at a fiver. If people in your “position” Mrs. Asphalt,/would form a combination, pledged to go without things which are in no way essential to comfort, not merely pander

to purse, pride and vanity, you would have less cause to look with envy upon those who go without them; and my shepherd’s sister would find it a lot easier to meet, those payments on her house.

“But Lord!” as Pepys would say, “how I have let my pen run on! ” You 'have to thank (?) the Meteorological Department’s man for the fact that this letter will reach you so soon. We have had two wet days in succession. Some day I must prepare a paper for the Philosophical Institute upon “the rainfall in its relation to the literary output.” Meanwhl’e, perhaps my pen has sufficiently disgraced itself. —Yours, Very faithfully, WILLIAM WOOLBALE.

P.S.—lf your husband is not too much absorbed in his breakfast and his paper—we get our papers three times a week, at five o’clock—and should want to know who your friend is, you can truthfully remark that it is one who has been jealous of him for many years.—Farmers’ Union Advocate.