502 Report on the Liverpool Prize-Farm Competition, 1877 — 
strutted, and Mr. Owen, therefore, did not receive a prize ; but 
his farm certainly may be named as an example of the advan- 
tage to farmer, labourer, and landowner alike, as well as to the 
consumer, of that liberty of action from which enterprise and 
energy in agriculture, as in other industries, can alone be expected 
to come. 
Referring now to the economy of farm labour : the amount 
paid annually as wages on these farms, in a district where wages 
are far higher than the average of the country, is certainly sur- 
prisingly small. Take the cases of the first and second-prize 
farms in the same class as that in which Mr. Owen competes 
for example. — Mr. Richard Mackereth, whose farm of 112 acres, 
at Waterside, near Lancaster, receives the first prize in this very 
interesting class, pays less than 10s. an acre annually in actual 
wages for hired labour, on land of which one quarter is arable ; 
and Mr. Charles Hollingshead, at Weaverbank, near Middle- 
wich, Cheshire, who takes the second prize in this class, with a 
farm of 116 acres, pays only 6s. an acre, or thereabouts (not 
including, however, women servants in the house), for the hired 
labour of his farm, about two-sevenths being arable. The labour 
is, of course, virtually all done by the tenant and his family. 
" The mistress makes the cheese," he tells us, " the mother being 
now helped by her daughter ; and I have two good boys of 
my own, and, with the help of one hired man throughout the 
year, we manage it amongst us." At the Waterside farm of 
112 acres, there are 28 acres of arable land, cultivated on the 
four-course rotation. The land is full of stock of all sorts ; 
22 cows and 9 or 10 calves, and as many yearlings and two- 
year-old heifers ; a flock of 80 ewes, lambed down and fed 
off ; a lot of pigs, fattened from the dairy ; upwards of 3 tons 
of cheese made annually ; the whole place, land and premises 
and fences, clean and trim and neat ; and the whole wages 
annually paid vary from 55/. to 60Z. Mr. Mackereth has 
three sons — one lad of 16 had just returned home from school, 
and the education of all has been cared for ; and with Mrs. Mac- 
kereth and her daughter in the dairy, and himself and sons in 
the field, not more than one hired hand, with an occasional 
day's help at harvest-time, is needed throughout the year. 
Mr. Charles Hollingshead, of the Weaverbank Farm, near 
Middlewich, whose words are quoted above, does not pay more 
than 35/. a year for wages, notwithstanding that of his farm of 
116 acres no less than 34 are arable, and a large quantity of 
potatoes are grown. Here, too, there is a large dairy — 33 cows 
milked daily, and pigsties full of fatting swine. Three sons 
here, too, have come into the labour-power of the farm. One, 
however, has now left, having got a farm of his own ; and it is to 
