ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. ^\ 



during the last twenty years of the fourteenth century are 

 uniformly low ; every kind of grain was cheap. Wool, as we 

 shall see hereafter, was seriously depreciated ; and it was upon 

 corn and wool the former for home consumption, the latter for 

 foreign trade that the agriculturist mainly depended. But, 

 on the other hand, labour was dear. A rise of nearly 60 per 

 cent, in the wages of harvest work, with a proportionate in- 

 crease in the payment of other services absolutely necessary in 

 order that the business of the farm should be carried on, must 

 have been almost ruinous, as has been stated elsewhere, and was 

 necessarily met by an abandonment of the ancient system of 

 bailiff farming, and by the adoption, after a brief interval of stock 

 and land letting, of the system with which we are familiar in 

 these days, though under very different conditions, that namely 

 of tenant farming. 



In Arthur Young's time, to revert to the contrast instituted 

 between the condition of the labourer in the fourteenth and in 

 the latter half of the eighteenth century, very little corn except 

 wheat was reaped. The average rate at which the service was 

 performed was 5*. 6d. an acre, and in making our comparison 

 we must remember that wheat was not the only corn reaped in 

 the Middle Ages, nor that which was paid at the highest price. 

 During the ninety years before the Plague the average price of 

 wheat was 55-. 9^., and the reaper received rather less than a 

 twelfth of a quarter for his labour. For twenty years after this 

 period he received rather less than one-eighth of a quarter; during 

 the period already adverted to, that between 1371 and 1390, his 

 payment was between one-sixth and one-seventh. In Young's 

 time his receipts were rather more than one-ninth. But, on the 

 other hand, it will be seen that the labourer of the eighteenth 

 century mowed the greater part of the corn sown, and received 

 on an average four tee npe nee for his labour. His condition then 

 was considerably inferior to that of the workman in the time 

 before us, when we consider not only the comparative rate at 

 which ancestor and descendant were remunerated, but the 

 wider range over which the former obtained higher prices. 



