Condition of the English Agricultural Labourer, 1871. 353 
I traversed a very general testimony borne to the fact that 
<lrunkenness in country places is decreasing rather than in- 
creasing. Still, admitting the improvement, there is too much 
cause lor that loud cry which rises both from farmers and 
clergy that the curse of the village is the house that sells beer."* 
Mr. Culley contrasts the Northumberland labourer with those 
in Berks and Bucks in these words : " Last but not least, it is 
not his habit to drink beer ; except at the annual hiring, he hardly 
knows what a beershop means, and his children suck at the milk- 
bowl, instead of himself at the beer-jug. Of all the temptations 
to improvidence which beset the South Midland labourer there 
is none to compare to the beershop ; and I may conclude this 
report as the wife of a farm-labourer wound up her address to 
me, 'Sir, them ale-houses is our curse !'"| The same cry comes 
from Shropshire, in some parts of which county the condition of the 
agricultural labourer appears to be very unfavourable. " Another 
great evil," says Mr. Lee, bailiff to the Earl of Powis, " is the 
system of giving beer or cider. The usual allowance every day 
is three quarts, but at harvest the quantity is unlimited on 
most farms, to encourage men to work. With the temptation 
thus thrown in their way, it requires a steady man to resist it." 
Mr. Stanhope says, "Above all other evils is part payment in 
beer or cider, A last objection to the system is, that it often 
extends to the women and children also. On many farms in 
Dorset and Salop, a large proportion of the whole outgoing for 
labour is paid in this way : the women and boys receive it in 
proportion to their money wages ; and thus the latter are taught 
from the outset of life to require during work the stimulus of 
drink." % A relieving-officer in Hertfordshire says, " Our 
labourers have neither pig, nor cow, nor poultry. When they are 
thrown out of work, they come immediately upon the rates ; all 
they think about when they have money is drink. In harvest 
men can earn 24^. a week, and they seem no better during that 
season than any other ; they drink the difference, and get ill on it." 
In Devonshire the cost of each man's cider is estimated at Is. ^d. 
a week the year through, a sum which would nearly pay the 
house-rent for the family. It would not be difficult from the 
reports to multiply evidence of the evils which result from this 
system, and we are happy to find that in every county there are 
many employers who are attempting to do away with the custom, 
although they have to contend with great difficulties on account 
of the prejudices of the labourers themselves in its favour. 
A practice of somewhat similar character is not unusual in 
• First Report, 18G8, p. 43. t Second Report, 18C9, p. 133. 
i Ibid., pp. 27, 28. 
