642 LABOUR AND WAGES. 



paid for by the day. During the first sixty years this labour 

 is a little better paid than that of the artisan's labourer, and 

 the advantage would have been maintained but for the fact 

 mentioned above, that the last decade is affected by London 

 wages. Of course nearly all the notes which have been taken 

 of this kind of labour are of country prices, and of agricultural 

 work. Under these circumstances, the rise is not 50 per cent, 

 and upwards, but only about 32! per cent. There is however, 

 I think, a reason, I can hardly call it an excuse for this fact, to 

 which I shall refer hereafter. The watchful prying quarter 

 sessions prevented the natural growth of wages, even though 

 such wages were supplemented from other sources. 



There is only one other set of wages, of which I have by no 

 means continuous information, but enough I hope for the 

 purposes of illustration, on which I have to comment before I 

 proceed to deal with evidence which is often more copious, 

 though more broken. I have ventured however on con- 

 structing decennial averages of women's work of the common 

 kind, such as hoeing and weeding, as opposed to harvest 

 wages. Here the average for the first sixty years is 2J. 3^. a 

 week, of the last sixty, in four decades of which I have found 

 evidence, it is 2s. &\d. I have only found seven entries of the 

 payment of women's work in haymaking, all in the first sixty 

 years, when the average is $s. 6d. a week. It is probable that 

 in later years women's work conformed to the justices' scale, 

 which defines the pittance they are to receive. 



Though I am not in possession of even as much information 

 on the wages paid to agricultural labour as I was when I was 

 commenting on the facts of the last two volumes, I am still 

 able to illustrate at an early and a late part of the period 

 what was paid for day and piece labour for purely agricultural 

 labour, and for occupations which were not artisan. For 

 example, threshing by the day and the quarter, mowing by 

 the day and the acre, reaping and binding by the acre, and 

 washing and shearing sheep by the score are to be found, and 

 most of them early and late. 



