AGRICULTURAL POPULATION. 57 



and a half, it is a quarter of a day. If they go a long walk, 

 seven miles or so, and it comes on a wet day, there is the walk 

 all for nothing. Children of the ages of four, five, and six, work 

 in the gangs. They earn 9 d. a day, the big ones ; the small, 

 4d. ; children of seven years old, 3 d. a day.&quot; &quot; It is the ruin of 

 a girl,&quot; says a parent, one of the laborers, &quot; to be in such a place 

 as that.&quot; &quot;My children s hands are so blistered,&quot; says another 

 of the parents, pulling turnips, that I have been obliged to tie 

 them up every night this winter. Pulling turnips blisters the 

 hands very much they are obliged to pull them up they 

 must not take turnip crones (a sort of fork) for fear of damaging 

 the turnips.&quot; 



&quot; The gangsman, or leader,&quot; says another witness, &quot; pays the 

 wages of all employed in the gang, and, of course, makes his 

 profit entirely from their labor, as the farmer takes care that the 

 gang system shall not cost him more than the common system 

 of individual laborers. The leader s profit, as I have heard, is 

 sometimes 15s. per day. The assembling of twenty-five and 

 thirty women and children and lads, of all ages and conditions 

 and characters, together, has a most fatal effect upon their morals 

 and conduct.&quot; Another respectable and reverend witness says. 

 The gang is superintended by a lazy, idle fellow, of profligate 

 manners and a dishonest character such, at all events, are the 

 characters of two in my own neighborhood.&quot; 



I will not dwell upon the evils of a management of this kind. 

 It is obvious what a power such a man, the employer of these 

 people, has over them ; and it is as easy to infer what is likely 

 to be the character of young persons, more especially, placed under 

 his control. When are men to be just ? and when are men, who 

 live upon the hard labor of others, and who hold not merely their 

 physical but their moral destiny in their hands, to feel their 

 responsibleness as Christians and as men ? 



The most melancholy circumstance in the case is given in the 

 testimony of one witness, a clergyman, who says, &quot; that he fears 

 the gang system will and must increase, especially upon large 

 farms.&quot; It would riot be unreasonable to fear that God would 

 send blight and mildew upon fields where human life and virtue 

 are thus sacrificed, and decency and morals thrown to the winds ; 

 and where the crops are watered with the tears of these wretched 

 victims of injustice and oppression. 



