SEED-TIME FOR REVOLT. 21 



wickshire from us. in the south to 135. in the northern 

 manufacturing districts. In Wiltshire and Herefordshire 

 they were as low as from 95. to us. and in Worcestershire 

 from 95. to i2s. Shepherds and carters, here as elsewhere, 

 received about 2s. a week more than the ordinary labourer. 



Cheshire was then almost entirely under permanent 

 pasture. Small dairy farmers v/ere numerous and they 

 lodged their regular labourers in their own farmhouses ; 

 the wives being employed to milk the cows. Maidservants 

 appear to have received high wages and were apparently 

 so scarce that they could have the key of the house one night 

 a week. Cash wages, however, were low, only from us. to 

 I2s., and though allotments were rare, many labourers pos- 

 sessed pasture for a cow. These cow pastures were com- 

 mon also in Shropshire, Staffordshire, Yorkshire, Rutland, 

 Derbyshire and Wales. 



Another pastoral county, Somersetshire, paid much 

 lower wages ; 8s. a week was quite common, though near 

 Bristol i2s. a week had to be paid. 



In Wales, the social standard of farmers and labourers 

 was almost the same. Labourers were generally boarded 

 in the farmhouse. Many small farms employed no labour 

 at all, every member of the family working, often without 

 wages, and the employer became himself a kind of head 

 shepherd. Yet wages near the great coal mines were nat- 

 urally higher than in other parts of Wales. In Montgomery- 

 shire, for instance, wages ranged from 155. to i8s. in summer, 

 whilst in Anglesea they were only us. to 125. A large 

 number of imported children were employed and it was 

 not uncommon for boys of ten years of age to work as 

 servants on a farm for eight months of the year, receiving 

 6d. and their board. 



The foregoing is a summary of the Reports of the Com- 

 mission of 1867. Now we will turn to Canon Girdlestone's 

 account of conditions in Devonshire, which historically is 

 important, for no doubt it was Girdlestone's successful 

 attempt to migrate labourers from the low paying to the 

 higher paid counties which induced Arch to organise a 

 system of migration and emigration on a national scale. 



