Report on the Farm-Prize Competition of 1872. 
323 
Married men, besides having coals carted free, are mostly 
allowed from one-eighth to one-tenth of an acre of potato-ground 
— tilled, dunged, ploughed up, and the crop carted home. 
Women seldom work in the fields ; and boys, owing to the 
horses being sensibly yoked in pairs, are not in so great 
request as where the reprehensible practice of driving a string 
of- three or even four horses still prevails. As helpers to the 
cattleman and shepherd, however, and for root-pulling, weeding, 
turnip-hoeing, and other light jobs, two or three boys are 
generally employed on every farm, and their wages run from 
45. 6^f. to 7s. per week, according to their age and ability. 
Single men, boarded and lodged in the farm-houses, receive, ac- 
cording to their capabilities and experience, 15Z. to 25/. a year. 
Labourers' dwellings, though often placed in the nearest 
village, and therefore not so convenient as if dotted about the 
farms, are not wanting on some of the holdings we inspected. 
On others, however, there was the usual outcry for greater cottage 
accommodation, as being the only means of guaranteeing a 
regular and effective supplv of farm-labourers. At the present 
time numbers of workmen, we were told, trudge several miles 
to and from their work ; and hence they are easily induced, 
when an opportunity offers, to undertake more attractive, because 
generally more lucrative, work nearer home. Farmers, how- 
ever, with the introduction of improved machinery, and the 
consequent greater necessity for skilled labour, cannot afford 
thus to lose the best of their hands ; and the supplying of com- 
fortable and conveniently placed homes for intelligent, well- 
trained servants, would seem to be the most rational and effectual 
means of stemming this drawing off of shoals of first-rate men 
from the healthful work of the farm. 
Besides the money-pavments and perquisites above-mentioned, 
workmen and workwomen, of all ages, are, on the majority of 
the competing farms, supplied with cider or, failing that, with 
beer, throughout the year. " Drink," remarked the Monmouth- 
shire farmers ; "Drink," re-echoed those of the Welsh tenants to 
whom the cider traffic extends, " is the curse, the bane, of our 
labouring population ! ' Throughout the year men are com- 
monly supplied with two quarts of cider each per day, and women 
and boys with one quart ; while, in the busv times of hay and 
com harvest, there is hardly any limit to the quantity consumed. 
Three gallons per man is no unusual dailv allowance, and the 
consequence is. that, long before night — in fact, during the 
greater part of the day — the men are not unfrequentlv in a state 
of semi-intoxication I We were informed of one confirmed and 
well-seasoned toper who, when asked to undertake rather an 
extra dav's work of thatching (at which he was remarkably 
T 2 
