152 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



through education, running away to the towns. Through 

 books, too, boys had made the discovery of a different world 

 outside the parish boundary. 



This antagonism to education was never a marked feature 

 of the northern or Scotch farmer who paid higher wages. 

 It did not occur to the midland and southern farmers to 

 try the experiment of offering higher wages and so attempt 

 to retain the services of the brighter lads, whose quickened 

 intelligence might prove of some material advantage to their 

 employers. Farmers might retort that this was taking too 

 great a risk, for the education giveninrural schools, especially 

 in Church schools, fitted no boy for a life on the land. This 

 to a large extent was, and is still true, though if the boy had 

 the priceless advantage of a good teacher who trained the 

 young to think instead of stuffing them with facts which 

 they could not mentally digest, the farmers would have had 

 the advantage of trained intelligences which took an abiding 

 interest in life and were filled with a noble curiosity. 



Chemistry was more and more coming to the aid of the 

 farmer ; and agricultural labour-saving machinery was being 

 improved. Financially, the turn of the tide in markets 

 and prices, though slow in movement, began to be 

 appreciable about 1906. .The dairy farm, the cattle rear- 

 ing-farm, the fruit farm and the market garden began to 

 change the aspect of many a district hitherto given over 

 to cereals and hops. 



The very interesting Report by Mr. Wilson Fox published 

 in 1905* on the Wages, Earnings, and Conditions of Employ- 

 ment of Agricultural Labourers in the United Kingdom, 

 shows the average earnings per week, including the value of 

 all allowances in kind, in England, to have been i6s. gd. in 

 1898 and 175. 5d. in 1902. The rates of wages in 1903 to 

 1905 remained at the same level as at 1902. Mr. Fox 

 attributed the slightly upward movement from 1895 to 

 1902 to the scarcity of labour which had left the land 

 for the mines and other industries. The mines of Dur- 

 ham and Glamorganshire, where wages were respectively 



1 Cd. 2376. 



