8 THE RURAL PROBLEM 



between 14s. and 15s. as the wage in her Wiltshire village, 

 as against the 16s. 9d. given in the official report as the 

 comity average. Mr. Mann found 14s. 4d. to be the 

 average of a typical Bedfordshire village, as against the 

 17s. 5d. of the official returns.* Mr. George Edwards, of the 

 Agricultural Labourers' Union, has quoted 10s., lis., and 

 12s. as the wages paid in Oxfordshire, as against the official 

 lGs. 4d. 



In quoting the official reports it is therefore well to 

 remember that : 



(i) They do not include casual labourers, though these are 

 statedf to number a fifth of the total labour in agriculture. 



(ii) They deal only with able-bodied adult men, and exclude 

 old and infirm men, and also women and young persons. 



(iii) They are calculated from information supplied by a 

 small and picked minority of employers, under whom con- 

 ditions of labour are probably most free from reproach. The 

 method employed has been to send schedules to farmers who 

 are known to the Department and to the Local Authority ; 

 all of these are employers who would have least reason to 

 wish to avoid answering questions about their workpeople. 

 There are in Great Britain some 170,000 holdings over 50 

 acres in extent, and probably about the same number of 

 large farmers. Yet only 45,000 schedules were sent out in 

 the United Kingdom, and of these only 15,800 replies were 

 received suitable for use, covering 50,459 labourers in all. 



(iv) A large portion of agricultural wages are paid in kind, 

 such as free or cheap cottages, potatoes or potato ground, 

 fuel, beer, or even board and lodging for unmarried men. 

 Special payments, known as Michaelmas money, harvest 

 money, and lamb money, etc., are also made at times of 

 excessive work, amounting in some cases to as much as £5 

 per annum. 



In the case of ordinary labourers these extra earnings 

 and allowances ranged from an average of 7s. 4d. in West- 

 moreland to Is. 8d. in Middlesex. " They were greatest in 

 those counties where large numbers of the men were pro- 



* Life in an English Village. P. II. M\nn, Sociological Papers, 1904. 

 t Cd. 6277. 



