SLOW RISE OF WAGES 405 



ances, at their own homes, proportioned to the number of their 

 children. After 1834 parish relief was only given in workhouses, 

 where husband and wife were separated. It was no longer the duty 

 of the parish to find work or to provide means of subsistence in aid 

 of wages. The change entailed no small degree of suffering, not only 

 on the sick and aged, but on the able-bodied. Relatively to the 

 demand for labour, there was a superabundant population, which 

 the old administration of the Poor Law had encouraged, and the 

 disproportion between supply and demand was increased by a 

 considerable extension of the use of machinery on the land. Em- 

 ployment was hard to get, and wages remained extraordinarily low. 

 In the Northern Counties and the Midlands, the great industrial 

 expansion and the rapid development of railways relieved the 

 pressure. Without their assistance it is doubtful whether the Poor 

 Law could ever have been brought into operation. Elsewhere in 

 England, migration or emigration seemed the only resource. 



Wages, reduced to a minimum, fluctuated with the rise or fall in 

 the prices of necessaries. Years must necessarily pass before the 

 glut in the rural labour-market could be absorbed. But the process 

 of adjusting the relations between demand and supply was delayed by 

 a new form of competition with adult male labour. In the increased 

 employment of women and children in the fields, which had become 

 a necessity in order to supplement the family income, employers 

 found a new supply of labour which to some extent neutralised any 

 tendency of wages to rise. It was in these circumstances that the 

 problem of raising wages by indirect means began to occupy the 

 attention of Parliament. Naturally men's minds turned to allot- 

 ments, which by their name perpetuate the compensation, often 

 sold before the award was signed, allotted to claimants of rights of 

 common. In 1796 a society had been formed " for Bettering the 

 Condition of the Poor " by means of these field-gardens. In 1819, 

 1831, and 1832 Acts of Parliament had been passed enabling the 

 Poor Law authorities or the parish to provide parish farms or 

 allotments. Sufficient use of these powers had been made to justify 

 the Poor Law Commissioners of 1834 in reporting the failure of 

 parish farms and the success of allotments. Further evidence was 

 offered before the Select Committee on Labouring Poor (Allot- 

 ments of Land). Their Report (1843), and those of the Poor Law 

 Commissioners (1842-1843), show that the acreage devoted to 

 allotments was increasing in most of the agricultural counties, and 



