GENERAL SYSTEM OF LABOUR. 77 



being to an appreciable extent a country of miners 

 and quarries, the natural competition and the higher 

 wages offered by the industries connected with them, 

 serve to draw away such extra labour as is available 

 in their direction. There is also a class of men who 

 are not casual, wandering, or migrating labourers, but 

 who have settled down to small holdings of their own 

 keeping perhaps a few cows, and who, not requiring 

 quite their whole time, can do a little in the " odd job 

 way," such as occasional draining, hedging, or in 

 the more remote districts, breast ploughing and peat- 

 burning. There are some counties to which outside 

 migratory men come in at certain seasons, but these 

 migrate chiefly from other parts of Wales, such, for 

 instance, as from the Vale of Clwyd, in the county of 

 Denbigh, to the hilly districts of Monmouthshire, and 

 from the county of Anglesea to Carnarvonshire, to 

 assist in haymaking returning to their own districts 

 for the corn harvest. In reference to this sort of inter- 

 migratory labour, Mr. Wilson Fox has some interesting 

 remarks in his report to the Board of Trade. He says : 



" In some districts in Cardiganshire and North Pembroke- 

 shire, there are cottages on the farms with five or six acres 

 of land attached, which are let by the farmers to men who 

 earn their livelihood in a variety of ways, in addition to 

 what they can make out of their land. For instance, the 

 tenants are sometimes road men, or perhaps they may do a 

 little carting or other odd work, or may work for farmers at 

 certain seasons of the year. In the letting of these small 

 holdings it is a frequent practice for an agreement to be 

 made that, as part payment of the rental, the tenant and 

 his family shall assist the farmer in the hay and corn 

 harvests as long as they last. The history of these small 

 holdings is that in former years, when the farmers wanted 

 cottages for their men on the farms, the landowners found 

 the materials and the farmers erected them. In this, as 

 well as in the other counties in South Wales, there is a 

 custom for farmers to provide potato ground free for 

 labourers who have cottages, whether they work for them 

 regularly or not. The giving such a potato plot constitutes 

 a sort of vague retainer upon the labourer's services. The 

 farmers undertake the ploughing and the manure carting, 



