THE WINTER OF DISCONTENT. 105 



and thai the Tory commissioner goes " to the farmer, squire 

 and the parson, and all three of them are inclined to take 

 an exaggerated view of Hodge's income," especially in 

 valuing the payments in kind. 



The latter criticism is damaging to the official figures 

 issued from time to time by the Board of Trade, 1 for they 

 are made from statements given to the investigators by 

 farmers, though doubtless these have been to a certain 

 extent checked by questions put to labourers. Mr. Graham 

 assumes that the agricultural labourer is inclined to make 

 himself out to be a poorer man than he really is. My own 

 experience is in the very opposite direction. I am cautious 

 about accepting any statement made to me by a farm 

 worker as to his wages, because I find he is inclined, like 

 any other man in any other class of society, to state his 

 income higher than it really is. He is indeed, as a rule, 

 ashamed of his poverty, and if his cash wages are very 

 low, this feeling prompts him to represent that he has 

 certain " privileges," otherwise he would not stay on at 

 his job. On further investigation, I generally find these 

 "privileges " do not amount to much. 



Being on friendly terms with almost all my neighbours 

 who work on the land, I have the same diffidence in asking 

 a labourer the extent of his income as I have in asking a 

 member of the professional classes, and the information 

 has to come to me unsolicited, or, through the medium of 

 the wives. Information is much more likely to be obtained 

 by questioning one labourer about another labourer's earn- 

 ings, though, of course, when one visits new neighbourhoods 

 one is less shy of questioning, and as a rule, the farm worker 

 is more inclined to be frank to a sympathetic stranger than 

 to any one living in his own parish. 



Though the author of The Rural Exodus questions the 

 accuracy of Mr. Millin, who he thinks might have been 

 biassed by his " Radical " views, he admits himself that he 

 found farm labourers in Gloucestershire 



1 Official information was gleaned from three sources: (i) Chairmen of 

 Poor Law Unions, (2) "Agriculturists," (3) Farmers; but probably (i) 

 and (2) were indistinguishable from (3). 



