AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS 229 



supervision of their leader, the hourrat, to the metayen 

 who brings 1001. into the partnership.' 



It may, therefore, prove that, in the future, some large 

 percentage of discharged labour will be settled on small 

 holdings. On larger farms economies will take the form 

 rather of reduced numbers than of reduced wawes. The 

 best men will probably be regularly employed at present 

 rates ; but nothing can, it is feared, secure permanent 

 wages for industrious but unskilful labourers, still less for 

 idle, drinking loafers, who are only servants on Saturday 

 nights. 



Different rates of wages have always existed, and may 

 be illustrated from the scales fixed by justices of the peace 

 in the seventeenth century.^ So, too, it was the habitual 

 practice of farmers, at the commencement of the present 

 century and previously to the general adoption of turnips 

 and artificial grasses, to dismiss half their labourers in the 

 winter months. The new and deplorable result of neces- 

 sary changes in agi'icultural practices is not merely reduc- 

 tion of wages, or even temporary loss of work, but the 

 sheer impossibility for a considerable section of the rural 

 community to find work in the Old World. 



There are, then, three classes of agricultural labourers, 

 who will be differently affected by the new departure 

 which seems imminent : those who themselves settle on 

 small holdings, those who find employment on large farms, 

 and those who are discharged. If the tendencies of Eng- 



' For further details see ' Rural France,' Edinhnrgli Revieiv, Octo- 

 ber 1887, pp. 312-15. 



' E.g., in 1610, in Rutland, three classes of labourers are distin- 

 guished. ' A superior servant in husbandrie which can eire, sow, mow, 

 thresh, make a rick, thacke and hedge the same, and can kill a slieep, 

 hog, and calfe,' obtained 21. 10s. a year with food; a common servant, 

 21.; a ' meane servant,' 11. 9s. 



