273 ON THE PRICE OF LABOUR. 



Similar but not equally striking changes take place in the 

 payments made for mowing grass. A rise analogous to that 

 which affects other agricultural labour occurs in the decennial 

 period 1311-1320, and though prices are not maintained up to 

 the time of the Plague, they are nevertheless markedly higher 

 than they were before the famines. After the Plague, however, 

 the rise is steady and considerable, amounting to 34 per cent, 

 on the average of the ninety years preceding the visitation. 

 In the year of the Plague, and in that which followed, the 

 payments made are very large, and swell the average of the 

 period contained in 1341-1350. In fact, the Plague had been 

 wasting the nation during the winter of 1348 and the spring of 

 1349, and in all probability the demand for labour was at its 

 height at the last-named time. 



We should not, I think, expect that so large an increase 

 would take place in the payments made for mowing, for the 

 reason given above, namely, that this kind of labour, though 

 necessarily hired, is generally engaged at a time in which other 

 agricultural occupations are least in demand, and in which 

 therefore better bargains can be made with the labourer. At 

 the same time, to refer again to the parallel which I have used 

 already, the comparative payment of the labourer in Arthur 

 Young's time was much less than that which was secured by 

 the medieval labourer. The rate paid for mowing, as we 

 gather from this authority, was in the latter part of the 

 eighteenth century is. 6d. an acre at the maximum, 2,5. gene- 

 rally. At the latter rate the labour was worth no more than 

 one-twentyfourth of a quarter of wheat, at the former about a 

 nineteenth, whereas in the first part of the period before us, that 

 is before the Plague, it was about one-thirteenth, and in the 

 latter portion as much as one-tenth of a quarter of wheat. As 

 I have observed already, the payments made for mowing 

 corn in Arthur Young's time are much less than those for 

 mowing hay. 



The labour of mowing did not include that of making or 

 tedding and cocking. This service, it seems, was generally 



