AGRICULTURAL POPULATION. 45 



a fair average would be eight to nine shillings sterling. A shil 

 ling may be reckoned at twenty-four cents, so that the monthly 

 wages for a man may be put down at eight dollars and sixty- 

 four cents. This is the whole, where labor is paid for in money, 

 excepting, as a matter of kindness, the farmer generally brings 

 the coals for his laborer. There are cases, too, in which the 

 farmer stipulates to supply his wheat to the laborer at a fixed 

 price, which is to be unaffected by any changes in the market. 

 Six shillings, only, a week are reported to be paid in some 

 places, but I have met with no case less than eight shillings and 

 sixpence a week. 



It may be interesting to some of my readers to have a more 

 particular account of the wages and condition of the labor 

 ers, and for that reason I will give some statements of their 

 condition in that part of the country where wages are paid in 

 kind. 



In the neighborhood of Haddingdon, in East Lothian, I vis 

 ited a laborer s cottage, being one in a range of six cottages, in a 

 district of country highly cultivated and improved, and present 

 ing some of the finest examples of agricultural improvement 

 which I have ever seen. The wife, a very tidy and civil woman, 

 about forty years of age, was at home ; her husband and daugh 

 ter laboring in the field. This was a very good specimen of a 

 neat cottage, and its inmates had passed the greater part of their 

 lives in it. It had no other floor but the hard ground : and two 

 beds were fixed in the wall, like sailors berths on board ship. 

 The shelves were covered with crockery ; and a Bible, and a 

 few religious and other tracts lay upon the mantel-piece. A 

 cake made of pea-flour and barley-flour was baking over the 

 fire, of which I was asked to eat, but the taste of which did 

 very little towards quickening my appetite. There was, besides 

 the one in which I was, a small room for coal and lumber, 

 where, in case of great emergency, a lodging might be made up. 

 One of her neighbors in the same block, with no larger accom 

 modations, had eight children to provide for. Two grown-up 

 daughters, with one smaller one, occupied one bed ; the parents, 

 with one child, occupied the other ; the two grown-up sons slept 

 in the lumber-room or coal-house. There is often much closer 

 lodging than this. The husband of the woman, in whose cot 

 tage I was, was a ploughman, and likewise a bondager a species 



