CHAPTER XLVII. 

 CANON GIRDLESTONE'S JUSTIFICATION. 



ESPECIAL interest will naturally centre in and around 

 the district made famous by the late Canon Gildlestone's 

 work of peasant migration, carried on under the tremend- 

 ous difficulties we recorded in a previous chapter ; and 

 a most important justification for all the worthy clergy- 

 man so nobly and unselfishly did is furnished by the 

 condition of affairs at Halberton, directly resulting 

 from the Canon's six years' labour. A correspondent 

 fully conversant with all that had taken place at Hal- 

 berton, and with the condition of the district before, 

 during, and after Canon Girdlestone's tenure of the 

 living, wrote to say this was in 1880 that it was very 

 different from its former state eight or ten years previ- 

 ously to 1880. Men who, having moved away with the 

 stream of migration set in motion in 1866, had chanced 

 to return to see their former living place, admitted that 

 it was like a new world owing to the great changes they 

 noticed. From the seven and eight shillings of wages 

 per week obtained when the Canon commenced his 

 work, the rate had advanced to eleven, twelve, and in 

 some cases more per week, and a couple of shillings 

 a week in addition in lieu of cider. It is true that the 

 then scarcity of this beverage had occasioned the sub- 

 stitution of cash for liquor, but the compensation was 

 on the maximum scale, and more than in a number of 

 other districts of the west of England. The increase 



in wages was therefore a rise of more than 50 per cent., 



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