16 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



out, as did Mr. Wilson Fox and Mr. Rowntree in later and 

 more prosperous periods, how they fared on the contents 

 of that cupboard. 



The rural labourer, deprived of the opportunity to exer- 

 cise peasant thrift through the Enclosures Acts, which from 

 1760 to 1867 put a fence round 7,000,000 acres over which 

 the peasant's cow, his donkey, his geese, fowls, or swine 

 used to graze, and from which he derived fuel for his house- 

 hold, fodder for his beasts, and even corn for his daily bread, 

 had now little else to sell but his labour, and the labour 

 of his family. It is difficult to see what course was open 

 to him as a voteless, voiceless man, if the farmers refused 

 to meet him, but to strike. 



In spite of the fact that Land Commissioners had instruc- 

 tions to reserve sufficient Common land for the needs of 

 the rural poor, even in as late a period as from 1845 to 1867 

 out of the 614,800 acres enclosed, the Enclosure Commis- 

 sioners had only assigned 2,223 to the poor. 1 This fact alone 

 must have been within the living memory of most of Arch's 

 men, and no doubt it rankled in their minds, as it did in 

 the minds of the rural poor in the days of Arthur Young, 

 that so many acres had been enclosed, not to grow corn, 

 but to make parks and shooting preserves for a new class 

 of landed plutocracy. 



Save where hamlets lay remote from towns on the slopes 

 of the northern hills, or amid the mountains of Wales, the 

 self-contained village was vanishing as fast as the stage coach. 



No longer were labourers' wives baking their own bread, 

 brewing their own beer, curing their own bacon, gathering 

 fuel from the copse or common for their open grates or 

 bread-ovens, or making their own wine or cider. With the 

 abolition of the turnpikes the little village shop began 

 to be driven out of existence by the smart provision mer- 

 chants who, now that the barrier of a toll had been removed, 

 invaded the villages. 



The Reports of the Royal Commission of 1867 z give us 



1 Report of the Inclosures of Commons, 1869. 



3 The Royal Commission of 1867 was appointed first to inquire into 

 the employment of children, young persons and women in agriculture. 

 The inquiry was extended to men workers. 



