112 GREAT BRITAIN AND IRElyAND - MISCEl,LANEOUS 



Monmouthshire it was found impossible to give separate averages for 

 each class of agricultural labourer, the farms being generally too small to 

 admit of distinctive duties being assigned to particular men. The average 

 total earnings for all labourers in Wales and Monmouthshire varied from 

 i6s. 6d. in Cardiganshire to 19s. 3d. in Glamorganshire. Making a 

 similar calculation, the Committee arrived at the conclusion that in Wales 

 and Monmouthshire 36 per cent, of all labourers are earning less than i8s. 

 a week. 



To bring the figures more up to date, the Committee avails itself of 

 statements published by the Board of Trade, wliich show that there was 

 a slight continuous rise in the cash wages of agricultural labourers between 

 1900 and 1912. As compared with 1907, the general average of cash wages 

 was 2.8 per cent, higher in 1912. Amongst the questions asked by the Com- 

 mittee in its Enquiry Schedule (which was sent out in 191 2) was whether 

 wages had risen or fallen in the five previous years, and out of 2,292 parishes 

 from which answers were received, it was stated that there had been no 

 change in 1,301 parishes, a rise in 954 and a fall in 38. It appeared that the 

 largest rise had taken place in the counties where the labourers were 

 already the most highly paid and that in most cases it had taken place 

 in 1912. 



An attempt is made in the Report to estimate the fluctuation in the 

 purchasing power of the labourers' wages. No records of the fluctuations 

 of retail prices for country districts are available, but taking the official 

 figures for lyondon and substituting the quantities of different commodities 

 consumed by typical rural households, the Committee arrives at index- 

 numbers showing the variations of retail prices of food commonly consumed 

 by rural labourers. Taking the year 1900 as 100, the index-number for 

 1907 is 106.4 ^nd for 1912 it is 116.3. It is stated that there was little or 

 no increase in the cost of house rent or clothing between 1907 and 1912 and 

 that the increase in the cost of living is not, therefore, so great as would 

 appear at first sight from these figures. Moreover labourers usually obtain 

 some of the food they consume from their own gardens or allotments or 

 by way of perquisites from farmers. Assuming, however, that a labourer 

 with a wife and three children spends only los. a week on food, the Com- 

 mittee finds that what he could have bought for los. in 1907 would have 

 cost him los. iid. in 1913. The Committee draws the deduction that, 

 when the increased cost of living has been taken into account, the real 

 earnings of nearly 60 per cent, of the ordinary agricultural labourers have 

 actually decreased since 1907. 



The Committee made a special inquiry regarding hours of labour, 

 from which it resulted that, in more than two-thirds of the villages from 

 which answers were received, the usual hours of work, in summer, are 10 

 hours or more, exclusive of meal times, and that the men have to work 

 extra hours during harvest. It is very rarely that agricultural labourers 

 are given a half -holiday on Saturday, and it is said that the absence of this 

 is felt very keenly by them, expecially in view of the fact that it is now 

 almost universal in the towns. 



