9 



that the Irishmen who used to be regular visitants have 

 now almost entirely ceased to come, though on the other 

 hand in some counties, especially in Scotland, they still find 

 employment. 



In a few counties a maintenance, or even an increase, of the 

 demand for casual labour is recorded as the result of the exten- 

 sion of fruit-growing, and the picking of green peas is also 

 specifically mentioned in one instance as giving additional em- 

 ployment for a short season. In the hop counties the annual 

 demand for " hoppers " none of whom probably figure in the 

 agricultural section of the Census continues, though the re- 

 duction in the area of hops by 20,000 acres within the past 

 twenty years must have reduced their numbers. On the whole 

 it seems evident that if the amount of casual labour employed 

 in various ways on the land could be calculated, it would be 

 found that it represented in the aggregate a substantial addition 

 to any estimate based on the Census returns, and that it has been 

 reduced proportionately to a greater extent even than the labour 

 of the resident agricultural class. 



Whether we assume that the present rate of the decline in 

 agricultural labour is 10 or 20 per cent, per decennium, or, as is 

 perhaps probable, something between the two, it will be granted 

 that its continuance is a serious economic and social fact. The 

 monotonous repetition in tones of varying intensity of the same 

 story by successive Census returns has so familiarised the public 

 mind with the process that it has almost come to be accepted as a 

 natural and inevitable course of events. It is perhaps 

 desirable, therefore, to remember that the reductions of the past 

 20 or 30 years have an importance greater than those recorded 

 previously. 



Prior to, say, 1870, there was in many country districts Thepositi 

 a superfluity of labour, and there is little doubt that a since 1870. 

 considerable proportion of the agricultural labourers re- 

 turned as such in the Census were only in partial em- 

 ployment. The elimination of these represented, therefore, 

 a less serious withdrawal of labour from the land than 

 the loss of an equal number at the present time, when 

 employment all the year round is more general. In 

 his report to the Labour Commission, Mr. W. C. Little 

 took the year 1867 as the starting point for his investigations, 

 and explained his reasons as follows : " The period was a 

 ' distinct epoch in the social and economic history of the rural 

 'population of this country. The enquiry (i.e., the Eoyal 

 * Commission on the employment of children, young persons 

 ' and women in agriculture, appointed in 1867) followed very 

 ' closely after the passing of the Union Chargeability Act of 

 ' 1865, though too soon for that Act to have had much effect in 



