108 The Alteration in tJie Distribution of the Agricultural 
six which showed the maximum decrease (over 15 per cent.) in 
tlie number of farm-labourers is a mining or manufacturing 
county, nor are any of the remaining five situated near to any 
mining or manufacturing district ; and on the other hand, 
Worcestershire and the North and West Ridings of Yorkshire, 
if not mining or manufacturing counties themselves, are cer- 
tainly situated near to mining or manufacturing districts, and yet 
in each of them the decrease in the number of farm-labourers 
was very small (under 5 per cent.). 
A comparison between the ordinary money-wages paid to- 
farm-labourers at the two periods we are considering, may 
perhaps help us to account for the variations in their number in 
different counties. Such a comparison cannot be very exact,^ 
because the only authentic returns from which, so far as I have 
been able to discover, the figures have to be taken, were not 
only made by different classes of persons or authorities, and in 
respect of different areas, but the several returns themselves 
are also by no means complete. The figures which are given 
in the table opposite for the wages which prevailed in or about 
1870-71, are for the most part taken from a Parliamentary 
paper which consisted of Returns from several Poor-law Unions, 
filled up by Boards of Guardians. A very large number of those 
bodies, however, apparently declined to fill up the returns, and 
others seem to have filled tliem up in a very careless manner, so 
that the returns cannot be regarded as accurate. Perhaps it 
was for these reasons that they were discontinued, for I do not 
find that they lasted longer than from 1869, the year of the 
original order of the House of Commons directing this series 
of them to be made,* until 1872, after which they ceased alto- 
gether. It appears to have been intended that these returns 
should be made quarterly ; but I could find no return for the 
quarter which ended Lady Day 1871 (which would have been 
the one I should have selected as being the nearest to the time 
of year when the 1871 Census was taken), but only the returns 
for the harvest and later periods of that year, and I therefore 
took the returns for the spring quarter of the previous year, 
1870. But as there were no returns for that quarter for Bucks, 
Cambs, Middlesex, Oxon, Salop, and the East Riding of York- 
shire, I have supplemented my table with figures for those 
counties (except Middlesex and the East Riding, for which I 
could find no returns at all) taken either from similar returns 
of other dates near that (juarter, or from the Reports of the 
Commissioners on the employment of children, young persons, 
and women in Agriculture, which latter refer to a rather earlier 
period, viz. 1867-68. The 1880-81 figures are taken from the 
* Siniiliu' returns appear to have been made in 1860-61. 
