348 Condition of the English Agricultural Labourer, 1871. 
the other men employed, who are called the "steam men." We 
have reason to believe that most of the engine-drivers tlicmselves 
are agricultural labourers who have very soon been trained to the 
use of the engine. By many of our local agricultural societies 
prizes are offered for the best stokers and engine-drivers, and the 
competitors are usually men of the rank of the ordinary agricul- 
tural labourers. In confirmation of this, Mr. Jacob Wilson, of 
Woodhorn Manor, thus writes to us : — " I have made an investi- 
gation into the antecedents of men at present employed by our 
' Northumberland Steam Cultivating Companv.' I find we are 
at present employing about ninety men, and of these about sixty 
were formerly ordinary, but intelligent, farm labourers, receiving- 
14s. or 155. per week. They are now making from 20^. to 23^. 
I know of several instances of sharp and intelligent lads, whom I 
have selected and put forward in this way with most encouraging- 
results. Our experience proves that the best engine and steam- 
plough men are those selected from our farms, and the worst are 
those who have been employed in going about the country with 
hired threshing-machines, &c. But you must remember that all 
our farm-labourers down here are well-educated." This distinc- 
tion of wage appears to us one of the most desirable improvements 
in the treatment of agricultural labour. It has been too much the 
custom to pay a uniform daily wage ; and we have frequently 
known old and inferior men offended at a difference being drawn 
between themselves and their younger and more intelligent rivals^ 
whose daily labour was worth almost double their own. 
From these and other causes there has been a general rise of 
wages throughout the United Kingdom, although it has not beer> 
quite equally distributed. Mr. Stanhope says*: — "In Lincoln- 
shire, not only has the amount of work to be done increased by better 
cultivation and by the reclamation of untilled tracts, while the popu- 
lation has remained almost stationary, but in addition to this, the 
younger portion of the labourers are being attracted into the towns, 
leaving only the old and ignorant behind. It is from this cause 
that the question of how to keep their labour at home has become 
a vital one to employers. Wages have already risen, and seem 
likely to rise." Mr. Henley says, of Northumberland, " how con- 
siderably wages have advanced in the district in the last year, 
especially for Avomen." The present Bishop of Manchester takes 
a less favourable view of the position of the agricultural labourer, 
and says generally that the difficulty in dealing with the education 
and improvement of this class arises not from their apathy, but 
f rom their poverty. 
It may be a matter of interest, therefore, to compare the present 
* First Report, 1868, p. 91, 
