378 



Harvest Wa<;es in 1898. 



harvests, it was fine in both years in the Eastern, Home, and 

 Southern and South- Western counties, though in parts of the 

 Midlands in 1897 the fine weather broke up before harvest 

 was completed, and consequently delayed it there. 



In the great corn-growing counties of Cambridgeshire, 

 Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk, and Lincolnshire, harvest wages 

 were generally rather higher than last year. In Norfolk and 

 Suffolk they usually varied from £^6 los. to los., exclu- 

 sive of any beer given or of other extras. In fifteen parishes 

 in the Guiltcross Union in Norfolk the wages agreed upon 

 for the harvest w^ere between £j and los., and in five 

 between los. and The highest wages appear to have 

 been paid in the Fen districts of Cambridgeshire, Lincoln- 

 shire, and Norfolk, where the work is usually done by piece- 

 work, and where the crops were abnormally heavy and very 

 much laid. A report from the Cambridgeshire portion of the 

 Peterborough Union gives the average earnings of seven 

 men carting for seventeen days as 9s. a day, and of three 

 men with binders and reapers as £2 a week each. A well- 

 known employer in the Wisbech Union writes that his head 

 carters earned ;£6 iis. iid. each in ten and a-half days, 

 and that one of them took an additional £j los. for cutting, 

 etc., in the three preceding weeks. 



The system of payment at harvest varies considerably in 

 different parts of the country. In the northern counties, 

 where the majority of the men are hired by the year or half- 

 year, the hired men are paid no extra harvest wages, but are 

 frequently supplied with extra food and drink ; the married 

 men attached to the staff of a farm are, however, usually 

 paid extra money wages, and often given food and drink. 

 Extra hands, both English and Irish, get from £^ to £6 a 

 month, frequently with an allowance of food and drink. 

 Irishmen are usually given accommodation in barns. In 

 other parts of the country the systems of payment are to 

 give piecework ; to contract for a certain sum for the harvest ; 

 to give the ordinary weekly wages, and, in addition, a bonus 

 at the end of harvest; to pay double the weekly wages 

 during harvest ; to give extra wages for a month certain, and 

 then to p^iy the ordinary weekly wages. 



