HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION 23 



more out of doors and follow healthier occupations. 

 Before the great depression the cottages were much more 

 generally in the hands of the landowner — the labourer 

 held his cottage from the owner and not from the tenant 

 farmer. To-day, as a rule, all the cottages belonging to 

 the farm are let with the farm and the labourer holds his 

 cottage at the will of the farmer who employs him — this 

 is technically the " tied cottage "—and he may suffer 

 hardship in consequence. The great need is for " free " 

 cottages in our villages and near to the schools. 



Rentals for cottages have always been so low that 

 cottage building has never been a remunerative propo- 

 sition. And it is very hard to see how the agricultural 

 labourer will ever be able to pay an economic rental for 

 his cottage. 



WAGES 



Agricultural wages have always been low. For 

 generations after the Norman Conquest the labourer 

 was not paid any wage at all — he had to work in return 

 for the protection afforded to him by his overlord, while 

 he got his subsistence from the land to which he had 

 right of access, or from certain payments in kind. 



By the fourteenth century cash wages were becoming 

 fairly general ; and it is interesting to note that the period 

 of highest wages in the whole history of our agriculture 

 was during the fifteenth century, when the average cash 

 wage was equivalent to 24s. per week in the money value 

 terms of 1914. This happy state of affairs for the 

 labourer was chiefly due to the shortage of labour which 

 was created by the Black Death. 



In the sixteenth century wages dropped again, and 

 there was little improvement until about 150 years ago, 

 when an upward tendency began to assert itself. 



