io 4 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



deficiency be filled ? How could the income be raised ? I had 

 long seen two things clearly ; first, that at the door of every 

 poverty-stricken village lay an nnworked silver mine in the 

 village land ; secondly that to yield its ore this mine must be 

 worked under certain definite conditions." 1 



Thus the Radical parson. It is clear that if 21 docs 

 not go in to 15, how much less does it go into 9 or TO ? 

 But were these the wages paid at this time ? Let us now turn 

 to the pages of Mr. T. E. Kcbbel, a trusted exponent of 

 the aristocratic view of the land question. In his EnglisJi 

 Country Life, published in 1891, lie says : 



" It appears on the whole, that the total yearly income of an 

 ordinary Knglish day labourer, including both wages and per- 

 quisites of everv kind, ranges from about /5o a year in Northum- 

 berland to a little over 30 in Wiltshire, and other south-western 

 counties. This gives an average of 40 a year. But it is only 

 the exceptionally low wages paid in a few counties which pulls 

 down the average even so low as this. In the eastern midland, 

 northern, and south-eastern counties it is commoner to find the 

 sum total rising to fj^, and /_}.j, than sinking to 37 or /jS. 

 Shepherds, wagoners, and stockmen arc 1 paid at a higher rate, 

 and their wages average about {"50 a year." 



Even if this statement were correct the Wiltshire or 

 south-western county labourer would get but a grim satis- 

 faction out of a national average of 40 a year or more paid 

 in other counties when he had to sustain life on /jo a year. 



Against this evidence we have that of Mr. Millin. 2 



" In Essex," he says, " so far as I have seen it, I don't think it 

 would be far wrong' to put down the income of an able-bodied 

 labourer at from /5 to /io in harvest, and for the rest of the 

 year ios. or ITS. a week when in work.'' 



Mr. Millin was a special commissioner for the Daily AV?r:;,. 

 and Mr. Anderson (iraham writing at the same time, in con- 

 tra-ting the statement made by a Tory and a Radical 

 journalist, attributes the divergence between the wages 

 ^ated by each to the source- of information. lie says 

 ihat the Radical journalist gets his information from the 

 labourer, who is tempted to put his wages at a low figure, 



1 J.''-iitii*ce)irc<; of a Radical I\ir f -nn, by the l\Yv. \V. Tuckwell 

 1 Life in viir Villages, also published in 1891. 



