. THE RURAL EXODUS 67 



wages, the average weekly rates of cash wages 

 for ordinary labourers never exceed 18/8, 

 nor, with all allowances included, 20/5 ! The 

 best paid labourer, the shepherd, secures, 

 including allowances, 23/6 in Cumberland and 

 Westmoreland, 20/9 in Yorkshire, Lancashire 

 and Cheshire, and everywhere else in England 

 under a sovereign. 



The economic facts of village life are to some 

 extent concealed from the public or that 

 small portion of the public which evinces any 

 interest in the subject by this unsatisfactory 

 system of allowances in kind, allotment 

 ground, rent-free cottages, and the like. 

 Such methods of augmenting inadequate 

 cash wages are thoroughly unsatisfactory, for 

 they virtually represent a system of doles 

 which tends to destroy the just independence 

 of the labourer, nor would they be tolerated 

 by any well-organized body of British work- 

 men. No reasonable student of rural economy 

 can avoid the conclusion that agricultural 

 wages are cruelly inadequate, or wonder at the 

 diminution of the rural population caused 

 by migration to our cities and colonies. One 

 simple calculation will impress even well-to- 

 do exponents of the doctrine of contentment 

 with the severity of life's struggle in many a 

 village home. Take an average family of 



