THE CONDITIONS OF RURAL LIFE 



71 



in that of the industrial households. The figures supplied by the enquiry- 

 do not allow the amount of this revenue to be fixed precisely. Its importance 

 in relation to total resources can vary very much from household to house- 

 hold and district to district. This doutbless is the reason that the classifi- 

 cation of households by districts seems to give no very important result. 

 In any case however the number observeil in each district is too small to 

 make the averages truly representative. We will merely note that in 

 Region I, the district of Nord, the income of agricultural labourers not 

 fed by their employers seems to be higher than elsewhere. 



The income in kind exists because most households possess a few bits 

 of land on which they harvest some of the corn or vegetables on which they 

 live and sometimes also keep a cow or a few pigs. In some districts, as in 

 Meuse, a labourer who has no land receives from the landowner the loan 

 of a field on which he grows potatoes or other vegetables. Very often the 

 employer also gives him the firewood he consumes on condition he cuts and 

 houses it outside his working hours. In Orne in some case the drink of 

 families of agricultural labourers is the cider of the second brewing or cider- 

 kin which the employer leaves to the labourers. All this income in kind 

 has perhaps very little importance in the households of labourers fed by 

 their employers, who most often work on a farm continuously, are the farm 

 hinds whose whole time, including Sundays, belongs to their emplo^^er. 

 This may parth' explain the fact that the difference between the earnings 

 of the fed and the unfed labourer often appears to be very slight. The 

 following figures concern 311 households of unfed and 117 of fed labourers 

 and refer only to the earnings in money of the fathers of families. 



Tablk II. — Income of the families of agricultural labourers, fed 

 and not fed by employers. 



Region 



I 



II 



III 



IV 



V 



VI 



VII 



VIII 



'-;ti 



017 



IT7 



')=iO 



In the district of Nord the difference between the figures which refer 

 to the two groups appears to represent approximately the cost of food ; 



