19-21.] AcRicuiiTTjRAL Labour Early Last CEx\TrRY. 



593 



got his other money together by saving from his fair wages as a waggoner. 

 Some circumstances occurred which obliged me to part with liim. The 

 consequence of this labouring man having been frugal and saved money, 

 and got cows, was that no one would employ him, although his superior 

 character as a workman was well known in the parish. He told me at 

 the time I was obliged to part with him : ' Whilst I have these things I 

 shall get no work : I must part with them all : I must be reduced to beg- 

 gary before anyone will employ me.' I was compelled to part with him 

 last Michaelmas : he has not yet got work, and he has no chance of get- 

 ting any until he has become a pauper : for until then the paupers will be 

 preferred to him." 



A man who had any property, if it was savings or a cottage 

 or a few animals, could not receive help from the rates : a man 

 wlio did not receive help from the rates could not get any farmer 

 to employ him. The Poor Law designed to help had become a 

 vicious circle from which the poor man could find no escape. 



The Roundsman System. — In the old village there had been 

 a number of persons who were partly farmers and partly 

 labourers. There were again a number of labourers who when 

 employment was scarce could find work to occupy themselves, 

 in collecting fuel, cutting turf and looking after their live stock. 

 A good many observers reflecting on the great stimulus that 

 might be given to agriculture by organisation, concentration, 

 and the proper division of labour had regarded this kind of dual 

 life as a great obstacle. Under the Speenhamland system the 

 labourer was deprived not merely of these aids to independence 

 but of any power to bargain for himself about his labour. He 

 had to take any wage that the farmer chose to give him and to 

 receive the rest of his subsistence from the parish in a form that 

 made him a kind of serf. An Act of Parliament known as 

 Gilbert's Act, passed in 1782, had introduced a system, called 

 " the roundsman system," by which the parish distributed un- 

 employed labourers among the parishioners, the parish paying 

 two-thirds of their wages, and the employer one-third. By the 

 Speenhamland system every labourer became a pauper in the 

 sense that his wages were eked out by a dole from the rates. 



If a labourer was in private employment, the difference 

 between the wage his master chose to give him and the recog- 

 nised minimum was made up by the parish. Those labourers 

 who could not find employment were shared out among the 

 ratepayers or else their labour was sold to employers by the 

 parish at a low rate, the parish contributing what was needed 

 to bring the labourers' receipts up to scale. The roundsman 

 system has been described by Crabbe : — 



B 



