206 BRITISH RURAL LIFE AND LABOUR. 



jobs was eighteenpence from the parish and a weekly 

 loaf of bread. He paid a shilling a week for his two- 

 roomed hovel. It was hardly possible to call the squalid 

 downstair place a room. It was much more like a hole, 

 and the " ground floor " was literally earth, and had no 

 paving of any kind ! 



Other cottages in the particular village under notice 

 had bedrooms that were pitiable to look at. A rickety 

 table and a broken chair formed sometimes their sole 

 furniture ; often no vestige of carpet on the floor ; and 

 huddled down in corners miserable rags of bedclothes. 

 These were so meagre that when divided at night amongst 

 " the family " they were inadequate for sufficient warmth. 

 And yet the land in this neighbourhood was notoriously 

 rich, and the farming prosperous. 



We traversed the well-known Exmoor district, border- 

 ing on Devon and Somerset, and found that there also 

 the general condition of dwellings for the farm labourers 

 was very bad one general or living-room and one bed- 

 room serving for the accommodation of an average of 

 some seven or, it might be, eight persons. In fact 

 to sum up the general position as regards the four 

 counties of Devon, Dorset, Somerset, and Wilts our 

 personal investigations in all ways confirmed the reports 

 of the Commissioners, which indicated that, with few 

 exceptions, the dwellings of agricultural labourers 

 throughout that large and important district were ex- 

 tremely bad. Inadequate altogether in size, ill-built or 

 ruinous, ill-drained, damp, draughty, and overcrowded, 

 they were utterly unfit to house a class of workers who 

 more than others, on account of the exposures to which 

 their labours subjected them, required dry, roomy, and 

 in other ways sanitary habitations. 



It will now be interesting to glance back at what may 

 be called the general position of the English peasantry 

 as regards remuneration for their labours that re- 

 muneration taking the form not only of cash wages, but 



