A HISTORY OF DORSET 



larger farms are often vacated for smaller ones, or that tenants take to 

 farming with insufficient capital. Also situation and convenience, with a 

 view to more rapid profits, is the first consideration with tenants, so that 

 farms in outlying districts are left vacant for those nearer the towns. Hence 

 there have been considerable changes of tenancy, though not so many as in 

 other counties, and, at any rate, land has not completely lost its market 

 value."' 



The diminished value of land has naturally made the question of rates 

 very prominent : the burden on land being now proportionately more 

 heavy. In 1895 Mr. Wood Homer, the moving spirit of the ' County 

 Ratepayers' Defence Association,' calculated that the burdens on land 

 amounted to 10s. the acre.'^" There was much interesting discussion at 

 the time, even such a far-fetched and doubtful remedy as bimetallism being 

 considered. 



But while the landowner and farmer have suffered severely from the agri- 

 cultural depression the condition of the labourer has been one of real, though at 

 first scarcely perceptible, progress throughout the nineteenth century. As early 

 as 1 8 I 2, what impressed Stevenson most was the rise in the standard of comfort 

 of the agricultural labourer. This had been effected by the introduction of 

 potatoes ; each labourer grew his own potatoes, and that enabled him to 

 keep a pig, so that he had the important additions of potatoes, pork, and 

 bacon to his former diet of bread and cheese and water. The potatoes were 

 grown upon the farmer's fallows in the upland farms, a portion being allotted 

 in proportion to the family ; but in the purely agricultural villages each 

 labourer had his own potato ground, as regular an ' allowance ' as his cottage 

 and garden.'" The average wage, it is true, was still 6s. a week,^'^ and 

 labourers were allowed corn at a fixed low price, but this meant more than 

 in Claridge's day, as prices were constantly advancing."' On the other hand 

 cottages were of the poorest description, with mud walls composed of road 

 scrapings,"* and as long as lifehold tenures were common there was not much 

 chance of improvement. But towards the middle of the century several 

 important changes affected the condition of the agricultural labourer. In 

 1834 the system of supplementing the wages of able-bodied labourers out 

 of the rates was finally abolished. This system had commenced in Dorset 

 about 1798 when wheat had risen to an immense price and wages had not 

 risen in proportion."' Payment according to a scale was adopted and relief 

 made to depend upon the price of the loaf and the number of the family. 

 The scale varied in different districts : in Blandford relief was given 

 where there was more than one child, in Dorchester and Shaftesbury it was 

 only allowed in families of three, or more, children."' As the system of 

 supplementing wages out of rates took root in Dorset there was a corre- 

 sponding increase not only in poor-rate expenditure, but with the general 

 demoralization an increase in pauperism and in crime. Thus, between 



'■' Par/. Accounts and Papers, 1882, xv, Mr. Little on Dorset, 27. 



'*' Ibid. 1895, xvii, 28. 



'" Stevenson, General Fieta of the -Agric. of Dorset, 454. 



'" Ibid. 453 ; ClariJge, 21. 



*'' Stevenson, 452-3. 



^ Ibid. 85. 



"■' Pari. Accounts and Papers, 1834, xxviii, App. A (i), 1 3a. 



''' Ibid. 1825, xix, 375. 



258 



