370 LAND REFORM 



referring at some length to the wages and housing of 

 the labourers, he urged the necessity for improving 

 their condition in order, as he said, to "retain for us 

 that greatest source of our wealth, the muscle and 

 sinew of the agricultural labourer." 



The Final Report of the Royal Commission so 

 late as 1897 deals fully with the question of wages in 

 all parts of the country, and shows how small the 

 advance had been. 



" In Norfolk," the Report states, "the general rate 

 of wages in 1894 was los. per week, while the average 

 earnings throughout the year were 13s. to 14s. . . , 

 In Suffolk the weekly wages of ordinary labourers 

 were 12s., in many cases los., and in a few exceptional 

 cases 8s." Mr. Wilson Fox, in his Report just issued, 

 gives the average earnings (including the value of all 

 allowances in kind) of the ordinary farm labourers at 

 17s. 5d. for England and 17s. 7d. for Wales, being an 

 increase of 4*0 and 6*6 per cent, respectively since 

 1898.^ 



As to the purchasing power of wages, about which 

 so many misstatements are made, it has been shown 

 in a previous chapter, from facts that can hardly be 

 disputed even by political partisans, that most of the 

 necessaries of life, victuals, covering, and shelter (and 

 the labourer had nothing to spare for anything else), 

 were cheaper before the time of free imports than 

 they were afterwards, so that a miserable increase 

 of a shilling or two in wages did not cover the 

 increase in cost of living. The labourer's earnings 

 at the best of times were always within the starvation 

 circle. 



^ "Earnings of Agricultural Labourers." Wilson Fox, Board of 

 Trade. Cd. 2376, 1905. 



