734 PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. Part III. 



4530. The practice of giving laborers grain, ^c. at a cheap rate, was adopted by- 

 George III. who carried on farming operations to a considerable extent, allowing his 

 laborers flour at a fixed price, whatever wheat might sell for. This benevolent system 

 has been practised by several gentlemen farmers, some of whom have allowed bread, 

 and others a daily quantity of milk, at moderate prices. The same system is general in 

 several of the western counties, as in Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall, where the laborers 

 have a standing supply of bread-corn ; of wheat at 65. and of barley at 35. per 

 bushel. 



4531. In the wages of labor, as well as in every thing else, moderation is desirable. It 

 is remarked, that high wages have a tendency to throw laborers out of employment, as 

 farmers in general, and even small proprietors, are unable to give such wages ; hence 

 they are obliged to carry on their work with fewer hands, or to postpone improvements, 

 which otherwise they would have undertaken. Nor is that all. The laborers themselves 

 suffer by it, and so does the public. In the fens of Lincolnshire, wages have risen in 

 harvest time, from 3s. 6d. to 7s. nay to 10s. 6d. per day, every day's hiring taking place 

 at a certain spot, where masters, whose work is in haste, outbid each other, and thus 

 raise the wages to that exorbitant height. The consequence was, that the laborers got 

 drunk, would not work above four days out of the six, dissipated their money, hurt 

 their constitutions, contracted indolent and vicious habits, and their labor was lost to the 

 community, for at least one-third part of the time, at a most important crisis. 



4532. Most descriptions of country/ labor, performed without the aid of horses, may 

 be let by the job. Farey, in his excellent Report of Derbyshire, informs us, that besides 

 all ordinary labor, the late John Billingsley, of Ashwick Grove, in Somersetshire, let 

 his ploughing, harrowing, rolling, sowing, turning of corn when cut, hay-making, &c. 

 by the acre, and from which he found great advantages, even where his own oxen and 

 horses were used, by the takers of the work. Whether we regard dispatch, economy, 

 perfection of rural works, or the bettering of the condition of the laborers therein, 

 nothing will contribute so much to all these, as a general system of letting works at 

 fair and truly apportioned prices, according to the degree of labor and skill required, in 

 each kind of work. Few persons have doubted that dispatch and economy are attain- 

 able by this method, but those who have indolently or improperly gone about the letting 

 of their labor, have uniformly complained of its being slovenly done, and of the prone - 

 ness of the men to cheat, when so employed. These last are to be expected in all 

 modes of employment, and can only be counteracted, or made to disappear, by com- 

 petent knowledge and due vigilance in the employer, or his agents and foremen, who 

 ought to study and understand the time and degree of exertion and skill, as well as the 

 best methods, in all their minutise of performing all the various works they have to 

 let. At first sight, these might seem to be very difficult and unattainable qualifications 

 in farmers' bailiffs, or foremen, but it is nevertheless certain, that a proper system and 

 perseverance will soon overcome these difficulties. One of the first requisites is, the 

 keeping of accurate and methodical day-accounts of all men employed ; and, on the 

 measuring up and calculating of every job of work, to register how much has been 

 earned per day, and never to attempt abatement of the amount, should this even greatly 

 exceed the ordinary day's pay of the country ; but let this experience gained, operate in 

 fixing the price of the next job of the same work, in order to lessen the earnings by 

 degrees, of fully competent and industrious men, to If to 2^ times the ordinary wages 

 when working by the day. 



4533. Select the men into small gangs, according to their abilities and industry ."and always set the best 

 gang about any new kind of work, or one whose prices want regulating, and encourage these by liberal 

 prices at first, and gradually lower them, and by degrees introduce the other gangs to work with or near 

 to them at the same kind of work. On the discovery of any material slight of, or deceptions in the 

 work, at the time of measuring it, more than their proportionate values should be deducted for them, 

 and a separate job made to one of the best gangs of men, for completing or altering it : by which means 

 shame is made to operate, with loss of earnings, in favor of greater skill, attention, and honesty in 

 future. "When the necessity occurs of employing even the best men by the day, let the periods be as 

 short as possible, and the prices considerably below job earnings, and contrive, by the offer of a desirable 

 job to follow, to make it their interest and wish to dispatch the work that is necessary to be done by the 

 day, in order to get again to piece-work. The men being thus induced to study and contrive the 

 readiest and best methods of performing every part of their labor, and of expending their time, the work 

 will unquestionably be better done than by the thoughtless drones who usually work by the day. And 

 that these are the true methods of bettering the condition of the laborers, Malthus has ajbly shewn in 

 theory, and all those who have adopted and persevered in them, have seen the same in practice. {Farcy's 

 Derbi/skire, vol. iii. 192.) 



Sect. III. Of the Arrangement of Farm Labor. 



4534. The importance of order and system we have already insisted on (3127.), and the 

 subject can hardly be too often repeated. To conduct an extensive farm well, is not a 

 matter of trivial moment, or to the management of which every one is competent. 

 Much may be effected by capital, skill, and industry j but even these will not always 



