32 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



Meat, though, was liaidly seen on the labourer's table save 

 on Sundays. Tea was 6s. to /s. a pound, sugar 8d., and 

 bread 7^d. a loaf. " Labourers stole turnips for food and 

 every other mon was a poacher." l Family earnings were 

 reduced by the fact that children were beginning to be sent 

 to school. The usual food of the labourer was potatoes, 

 dry bread, greens, herbs, kettle-broth, weak tea, and bacon 

 sometimes. This kettle broth seemed to luive been the 

 common food in the southern comities, so we And by the 

 evidence collected by Mr. Austin. 



And indeed the labourer was little if any betier oil than 

 eighty years before. It was a mystciy, says Mr. Curlier, 

 even to farmers, how they lived in many pans of the country. 

 But it seems to me that it was a mystery that farme rs them- 

 selves could easily have solved. Small wonder was it that 

 little children began to learn Joseph Arch's grace : 



Everywhere Arch and his men could see farmhoih* 1 :. b<-ing 

 enlarged, and country mansions being erecKd, and the 

 labourer compelled to live in cottages which can only he 

 described as hovels. Not only we're tlu-y hovels, but the 

 effects of the old Settlement Law weie still felt in the 

 country parishes, making landowners loth to build cottages 

 for fear of their ill-paid laboureTs becoming chargeable in 

 the parish. Not only were nun kept poor, but they and 

 their families were subjected to degrading circumstances. 



Cobelen tells us that "at Stourpaine 1 , in J)oi>et, one 

 bedroom in a cottage eontaincel ihn r he-ds 01 cupit d by i Irven 

 people of all nge'S and both sexes with no curtain or partition 

 whatevei ; and that at Milton Abbas on the average of the 

 last census there' were thirty-six p< r-ons in each home, and 

 so crowded \vere ihe-y that cottnrers whh a, de-ire for de- 

 cency would combine and place- all the male-- in one cottage 

 and all the fe-males in a. not her." Thu> it wa- their col It cii\-e 

 \\ill in this in>tance protected them from moral degradation. 

 1 A Slrr 4 Hi:!ory nf E;;g!i;h Agriculture, by \V. II. K. ("urtlcr. 



