26 BRITISH RURAL LIFE AND LABOUR. 



acre. The same increase had been made on a farm in 

 Warwickshire. In Bedfordshire hoeing wheat has also 

 gone up from two and threepence to four and sixpence 

 an acre. These are extreme instances. Sometimes 

 the increase has only been 50 per cent. ; in others, less 

 than that ; in some others, curiously enough, prices had 

 not varied in fifty years : but where there was a large 

 increase it was generally found that the amount of the 

 work had fallen off considerably. 



There is often an enormous difference in the piece- 

 working capacity of different men. Some can do even 

 twice as much as others in the same time. We can person- 

 ally recall one labourer in a large agricultural district 

 of Somersetshire who stood up head and shoulders, so 

 to speak (for the amount of work he could do), above 

 the whole of the men on that countryside. Strong and 

 well built, with sinews like iron, no one could touch him 

 for the work he did. During corn harvest he could rise 

 at three in the morning, cook for himself (he was a single 

 man) a frying pan full of potatoes, and would then start 

 for the fields. Returning to breakfast at the ordinary 

 hour, he would eat such a large quantity of food that 

 no one would suspect that he had really so substantially 

 broken his fast at 3 a.m. All the neighbouring farmers 

 were eager to get this Hercules at harvest work, but 

 of course he could not divide himself into parts. He 

 never, however, was in want of " a job." The amount 

 of cider he could consume in a hot August day would 

 alarm a total abstainer. We do not recall the wages 

 this man could command, but we remember that they 

 were far and away beyond the " average." 



As to the question of " extras " in cash, Mr. Wilson 

 Fox says : 



" A great distinction exists in many counties between 

 the current rates of weekly cash wages and the actual cash 

 earnings of ordinary labourers, the weekly wages being 

 frequently augmented by money earned at piecework by 

 special payments for corn harvest, and in some cases by 



