10 THE RURAL PROBLEM 



and lambing entail night work of a particularly tiring kind, 

 in the course of which at least one labourer, and sometimes 

 more, assists the farmer himself. 



When all due allowance has been made for the uncertainty 

 of the duties and the lack of positive information as to the 

 number of hours worked, it is no exaggeration to say that an 

 agricultural labourer may think himself lucky if he earns 

 3|d. an hour, and many do not even earn 3d. Private 

 inquiries in typical villages of each county revealed that in those 

 villages the wages amounted to 4d. an hour and over in five 

 counties oj England, 3d. an hour or under in 29 different 

 counties, while in Dorset and Somerset cases were actually 

 found of horsemen working at 2d. an hour during the summer.* 



Holidays, except Christmas Day and Good Friday, are 

 unknown in many parts of England and Wales, though the 

 practice of granting Bank Holidays seems to be on the 

 increase. Where men are engaged monthly or half-yearly, 

 deductions are not as a rule made for short periods of sickness, 

 though such deductions are by no means unusual. But where 

 the engagement is weekly many employers pay only for time 

 actually worked. And in the Eastern, Midland, and Southern 

 Counties, where a large proportion of the farming operations 

 are performed on piecework, sickness or wet weather means 

 loss of pay altogether. 



What is not generally realised is that in the matter of 

 hours the labourer is far worse off than he used to be. An 

 eight hours' day for the agricultural labourer was actually the 

 custom in England at the end of the eighteenth century. William 

 Marshall, the agriculturist, while mentioning that the 

 ploughmen of Norfolk sometimes wrought as long as ten 

 hours a day, says that in most parts of the kingdom eight 

 hours a day was the ordinary custom for team labour.t 



Indeed, in some counties the hours were even shorter. In 

 Buckinghamshire, where labourers now work twelve hours in 

 summer, the ploughmen of 120 years ago went out from 

 Candlemas to Martinmas at 7 in the morning, and returned 

 at 3 in the afternoon ; and in the winter half-year they went 



* See Appendix C. 



t Rural Economy of Norfolk, W. Marshall (London, 1787), 

 Vol. I. p. 1.38. 



