66 AN AGRICULTURAL FAGGOT. 



same amount of work. To some extent and in some 

 districts the number of hours worked in the week seems to 

 be less now than it used to be. In a Parliamentary Return 

 issued in 1890 some particulars were given for certain 

 counties of the average number of hours worked by 

 agricultural labourers as a week's work in the years 1850, 

 i860, 1870, 1880, and 1890. The return is on the face of 

 it not exhaustive, but so far as it goes it shows that in 

 twelve out of forty-one different districts the week's work 

 had been reduced during the preceding thirty years. In 

 two instances — South Devon and East Suffolk — the 

 reduction was reported to have taken place within the 

 past ten years. 



There has lately been issued by the Board of Trade a 

 report by Mr. T. H. Elliott * on the relation of wages in 

 certain industries to the cost of production. This contains 

 a summary of fifty-six farmers' balance sheets submitted 

 to the Royal Commission on Agriculture, 2 from which has 

 been calculated in each case the proportion which the cost 

 of labour bears to the total value of the produce of the 

 farm and to the total expenditure. Most of the accounts 

 relate to only one year, and these figures might be so 

 greatly affected by the season that they would not give 

 reliable data on this point. In nine cases, however — 

 comprising eight different counties — particulars are given 

 for a series of years covering the greater part of the 

 ' seventies," and including in one or two instances some 

 of the " sixties " as well. Taking the mean of these nine 

 cases, it appears that the percentage of the cost of labour 

 to the value of produce was 27*0, and the percentage of 

 cost of labour to total expenditure was 28*5. Roughly, 

 therefore, the labourer took rather more than one-fourth 

 of the whole of the produce of the farm as his share. 



It would take far too much time to go into these figures 

 at length or to compare them with those given for other 



1 Now Sir T. H. Elliott, K.C.B. 



2 The "Richmond" Commission of 1880-2. 



