RISING WAGES 



45 



figures are for cash wages only and for 

 ordinary labourers. They do not include 

 pa^Tnents for piecework, cottages and gar- 

 dens free or at rents below the letting value, 

 harvest earnings, overtime money, or any 

 extra allowances ; and they do not apply 

 to men having the charge of animals : — 



The returns for the earlier years given in 

 the table are mostly from private sources and 

 rest on no uniform method of inquiry. Those 

 for 1768-70 are taken from Arthur Young's 

 Tours ; those for 1824 from an abstract, 

 which Mr. Prothero calls "very defective and 

 unreliable," prepared for the Select Com- 

 mittee on Labourers' Wages of 1825, which 

 shows, by the way, how long ago the subject 

 engaged the attention of Parliament ; those 



