300 THE RURAL POPULATION, 1780-1813 



On middle-sized occupations, servants in husbandry, annually 

 hired at the fairs for fixed yearly wages, and boarded and lodged 

 in the house, did the work of the farm. Except at harvest there 

 was little demand for day-labour. Threshing, the most unwhole- 

 some of rural occupations, was practically the only winter employ- 

 ment. On the open-fields, there were no quickset hedges to plash, 

 or trim, or weed ; no ditches to scour ; no drains to maintain. 

 There were no drilled crops to keep clean ; turnips were seldom 

 grown, and beans rarely hoed. This scarcity of constant, and 

 especially of winter, employment, which will probably be reproduced 

 under the rule of small holdings, partly explains the slow growth 

 of rural population. It also emphasises the value to day-labourers 

 of commons and domestic handicrafts. Without them it is difficult 

 to understand how agricultural labourers, who were not partners 

 in village farms, even existed. " In hay and harvest time," writes 

 Forster, 1 "it is inconceivable what numbers of tradesmen and 

 handicraftsmen flock into the country." " If," says Stone, " the 

 farmers in the most unenclosed counties . . . where there are no 

 manufactories, could get no further assistance during their harvest 

 than from their own inhabitants, their grain would frequently be 

 spoiled." 2 To the same effect wrote the Reporters to the Board 

 of Agriculture. Open-field farmers were in harvest dependent on 

 migratory labour. In unenclosed counties, says the Report to 

 the Board for Huntingdonshire, very little employment of a constant 

 kind was given to labourers, who stop with the farmers to help 

 thresh out their grain in the winter, and " leave for more cultivated 

 counties where labour is more required." The open-field farmer of 

 the county depended for harvesting on " the wandering Irish, 

 manufacturers from Leicestershire and other distant counties." 

 The same was said to be true of Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire. 

 In Wiltshire, the crops were harvested by taskers " from the more 

 populous parts of the county or from Somersetshire, or other 

 neighbouring counties." 3 In the Isle of Wight, during the harvest 

 of 1793, there were " from 600 to 700 " labourers employed " from 

 Dorsetshire and West Somerset." It illustrates the times to add 

 that, as there was a hot press out for the Navy, they came and 

 went with a pass from the Government. 4 In Herefordshire the 



1 Enquiry into the Present High Price of Provisions (17G7). 



2 Suggestions, etc., p. 31. 8 Davis' Wiltshire (1794), p. 89. 

 4 Driver's Hampshire (1794), p. 65. 



