426 Report on the Agriculture of Cumberland, 



finished until a late hour. In these days, the first question which 

 the female asks when about to enter into an engagement is, if " she 

 will be required to work out?" If answered in the affirmative, 

 the would-be-master or mistress may look in the market throng 

 for another as soon as he or she likes, for in nine cases out of 

 ten, the agricultural " girls of the period " have a decided objec- 

 tion to being employed in the fields. I may therefore assert 

 that not only have wages been doubled, so far as relates to money 

 matters, but farm-servants do not perform over two-thirds of the 

 labour they formerly did. And while on the subject of females 

 working in the fields, it may safely be stated that not one-fourth 

 of the number are now employed that were twenty-one years 

 ago. I have already stated that female servants engaged by the 

 half-year have a decided aversion to out-door labour ; neither are 

 labourers' wives anxious for this kind of work, owing to their 

 husbands making higher wages ; and other branches of industry 

 being good, for example, at the factories and workshops, few 

 women can be engaged from the towns, so that the supply of 

 female workers is limited indeed. Where young girls are seen 

 at work in the fields now-a-days, they are often the daughters 

 of small occupiers, who choose to remain at home rather than 

 engage themselves in other spheres of action, and so have to put 

 their hands indiscriminately to any of the miscellaneous opera- 

 tions of the farm. 



It is to be regretted that hiring fairs still continue, where 

 the on-looker is mortified at seeing men and women engaged 

 according to their physical capacities upon the public streets, in 

 much the same way that horses and cattle are bought and sold. 

 Well might the French tourist give a public hiring the unen- 

 viable title of " an English slave market." 



The Economy of Labour. 



By the increase of agricultural implements, labour has been 

 much economised. Perhaps it is well that such is the case, for 

 had it been otherwise, it is difficult to say how in these times 

 of high wages and scarcity of work-people, farmers would have 

 ffot their hav made and their corn gathered in. No doubt the 

 difficulties attending the labour question have tended to cause 

 the agriculturist to extend his use of machinery ; but it is a 

 question that works both vvays, for it is doubtless in part owing 

 to the introduction of machinery that labourers have emigrated, 

 and engaged themselves at home in the collieries, mines, iron- 

 works, and other spheres of industry. I shall be best able to 

 illustrate how labour has been economised by giving the details 



