WAGES ADVANCED. 263 



winners in one family was quite an exceptional event. 

 Against this, a labourer in a neighbouring village had 

 to maintain a family of eight on eleven shillings a week. 

 Women in these districts were still employed, and earned 

 an average of ninepence a day. Wages of ten and eleven 

 shillings a week obtained at Nether-Avon for ordinary 

 labourers. In one family the earnings fortunately 

 were : father, ten shillings ; two sons of twenty-four and 

 twenty-seven years of age, ten shillings each ; and one 

 lad of fourteen, four and sixpence. The prevailing 

 rates of pay in other parts of the same county Wilts 

 were ten, eleven, and sometimes twelve shillings. 

 Putting it in an average, therefore, the rate would be 

 eleven shillings. Near Amesbury, on the borders of 

 Salisbury Plain, we encountered and conversed with a 

 shepherd of the plain with his accompanying dogs. He 

 told us that he got twelve shillings a week and a cottage 

 rent free. His dog allowance was fourpence per week 

 for meal, and doubtless the man supplied what 

 scraps there fell from his own table. A special pay- 

 ment was made to him of two pounds in money for the 

 " lambing season," but the necessary care and attention 

 of the sheep and lambs during that season were con- 

 siderable often requiring him to stay up all night. 

 Once, he said, during a whole fortnight he had not been 

 able to take off his clothes or boots. Around Salisbury 

 the general average of wages mentioned was maintained. 

 In Wiltshire, as elsewhere, there was additional pay for 

 the increased work during harvest time, and in the 

 neighbourhood of Westbury some manufacturing work 

 that had sprung up caused farm wages to go up to as 

 much as twelve and sixpence and thirteen shillings a 

 week, and it caused even women labour to go up to a 

 shilling a day. Railway labourers, in the same neigh- 

 bourhood, earned fourteen and fifteen shillings a week, 

 and from fifteen to thirty shillings a week could be 

 earned by other labourers in coke and coal works. 



