CLASSIFICATION OF LABOUR. 9 



farmers engage all the men they may want, as far as 

 possible upon half-yearly or yearly terms ; but, never- 

 theless, in some of the northern counties, migratory Irish 

 labourers are employed, and in Cheshire, farmers begin 

 employing Irish labourers as early in the year as February 

 and March, and as late as October or November. It 

 will be interesting, in this connection, to mention the 

 English counties where Irish labour is casually utilised. 

 From the west of Ireland the migratory stream generally 

 goes to the midland and northern counties ; but young 

 Irish women labourers cross from the Isle of Achill 

 (Mayo) to Scotland. Not many Irish go farther south 

 than Cambridgeshire. Occasionally, however, they are 

 to be found in Beds, Bucks, Surrey, Sussex, and Wor- 

 cester. Formerly, it is said, a great many more than 

 now came from Ireland in fact, a considerably larger 

 number ; but the stream of migrants began to diminish 

 when machinery was utilised at harvest times, and the 

 acreage of grain crops grew less. Some Irish labourers 

 go to various counties in succession as work for them 

 is available. In Derbyshire, for example, men obtain 

 temporary employment before the corn harvest in 

 Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, and then migrate there 

 for work. Some manage to get the labour chances of 

 two harvests the earlier ones in the south of England, 

 and the later ones in the north. Some migrants, who 

 formerly came to Berks, Hereford, Huntingdonshire, 

 Kent, and Oxfordshire, no longer do so. Those from 

 Cavan, Galway, Mayo, Leitrim, Roscommon, and Sligo 

 go chiefly to Cambridgeshire (North), Cheshire, Derby- 

 shire, Durham, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Staffordshire, 

 Warwickshire, and Yorkshire. 



Harvest times, of course, almost everywhere, create 

 an extra demand for labour that cannot be satisfied 

 by the normal labouring population in any rural district. 

 On the largest farms, where a little surplus labour 

 would not be a matter of great moment at any time, 



