174 REPORT ON THE AGRICULTURE OF PERTHSHIRE. 



for out-door labour, such as planting potatoes, gathering the 

 weeds out of the land after harrowing, singling turnips, harvest, 

 and potato-lifting. 



The cause of this state of things may be found in men and 

 women now having difficulty in earning a living, when not work- 

 ing on the farms, which they formerly obtained, in hand-loom 

 weaving or needlework of various kinds, now superseded by the 

 power-loom and the sewing-machine. They find that the wages at 

 the factories in Dundee, Perth, Blairgowrie, or in places out of 

 the county, are better and more certain than the hard labour and 

 uncertain wages of out-door work. Emigration also has tended 

 to thin the population, and must do so the more it proceeds, be- 

 cause when people find that they have as many friends and rela- 

 tions in New South Wales or New Zealand as at home, much of 

 the aversion to a new country is removed, and they come to re- 

 gard it as a new home prepared for them, with better prospects 

 than the old one they are to leave behind. The tendency also on 

 the part of proprietors to endeavour to check the increase of the 

 poor-rates, since the Poor Law of 1845 was passed, by not rebuild- 

 ing or repairing cottages, has also had its share in contributing 

 to the reduction of the rural population. If thrashing-machines, 

 reapers, horse-rakes, and various other agricultural implements 

 had not been invented, farming operations would long ere this 

 have come to a dead lock. Those proprietors only who farm 

 part of their own estates can be fully aware of the hardship en- 

 tailed on their tenantry from this cause, and if it continue, land- 

 lords will find that a policy which, in the first place, affected the 

 tenants, will ultimately affect themselves, and that they had 

 better have met the obligation imposed on them, than attempt 

 to relieve themselves by extraordinary expedients. In places 

 where there are too many people and too many horses, and the 

 labour of both is misapplied and wasted, they may well be 

 reduced in number ; but in those districts where all the present 

 population and more are- wanted, it is a great mistake, from a 

 terror of poor-rates, to thin their numbers. 



To prevent the further desertion of their native land by the 

 labouring class of this country, it is not too soon that the move- 

 ment for the improvement of their dwellings, both cottages and 

 bothies, has been originated. The best means for checking the 

 reduction of the necessary rural population, would be by a more 

 general employment of married ploughmen, who would rear 

 families on the farm early accustomed to and suited for farm 

 work. Farmers in the county prefer them, both on this account 

 and because they are steadier than bothy lads ; but of course 

 married men with families require cottages, and all farms have 

 not cottages sufficient. To prevent the expense of separate 

 cottages on farms requiring a number of ploughmen, young un- 



