104 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



deficiency be filled ? How could the income be raised ? I had 

 long seen two things clearly ; first, that at the door of every 

 poverty-stricken village lay an unworked silver mine in the 

 village land ; secondly that to yield its ore this mine must be 

 worked under certain definite conditions." l 



Thus the Radical parson. It is clear that if 21 does 

 not go in to 15, how much less does it go into 9 or 10 ? 

 But were these the wages paid at this time ? Let us now turn 

 to the pages of Mr. T. E. Kebbel, a trusted exponent of 

 the aristocratic view of the land question. In his English 

 Country Life, published in 1891, he says : 



" It appears on the whole, that the total yearly income of an 

 ordinary English day labourer, including both wages and per- 

 quisites of every kind, ranges from about 50 a year in Northum- 

 berland to a little over 30 in Wiltshire, and other south-western 

 counties. This gives an average of 40 a year. But it is only 

 the exceptionally low wages paid in a few counties which pulls 

 down the average even so low as this. In the eastern midland, 

 northern, and south-eastern counties it is commoner to find the 

 sum total rising to 43, and 44, than sinking to 37 or 38. 

 Shepherds, wagoners, and stockmen are paid at a higher rate, 

 and their wages average about 50 a year." 



Even if this statement were correct the Wiltshire or 

 south-western county labourer would get but a grim satis- 

 faction out of a national average of 40 a year or more paid 

 in other counties when he had to sustain life on 30 a year. 



Against this evidence we have that of Mr. Millin. 2 



" In Essex," he says, " so far as I have seen it, I don't think it 

 would be far wrong to put down the income of an able-bodied 

 labourer at from 5 to 10 in harvest, and for the rest of the 

 year los. or us. a week when in work." 



Mr. Millin was a special commissioner for the Daily News, 

 and Mr. Anderson Graham writing at the same time, in con- 

 trasting the statement made by a Tory and a Radical 

 journalist, attributes the divergence between the wages 

 stated by each to the sources of information. He says 

 that the Radical journalist gets his information from the 

 labourer, who is tempted to put his wages at a low figure, 



1 Reminiscences of a Radical Parson, by the Rev. W. Tuckwell 

 1 Life in our Villages, also published in 1891. 



