30 
Condition of the Agriailtural Labourer. 
£xtracts from a Letter of the Clerk of the Staff ord Union. 
January 20th, 1841. 
" If we follow the agricultural labourer into his miserable dwelling, 
"we shall find it consisting of two rooms only ; the day-room, in addition 
to the family, contains the cooking utensils, the washing apparatus, agri- 
cultural implements, and dirty clothes ; the windows broken and stuffed 
full of rags. In the sleeping apartment the parents and their children, 
boys and girls, are indiscriminately mixed, and frequently a lodger 
sleeping in the same and the only room ; generally no window, the 
openings in the half-thatched roof admit light and expose the family to 
every vicissitude of the weather — the liability of the children so situated 
to contagious maladies frequently plunges the family into the greatest 
misery. The husband, enjoying but little comfort under his own roof, 
resorts to the beer-shop, neglects the cultivation of his garden, and im- 
poverishes his family. The children are brought up without any regard 
to decency of behaviour, to habits of foresight, or self-restraint : they 
make indifferent servants, the girls become the mothers of bastards, and 
return home a burden to their parents or to the parish, and fill the 
workhouse. The boys spend the Christmas week's holiday and their 
year's wages in the beer-shop, and enter upon their new situation in 
rags — associating with the worst of characters, they become the worst 
of labourers, resort to poaching, commit petty thefts, and add to the 
county rates by commitments and prosecutions. 
" On the contrary, on entering an improved cottage, consisting on the 
ground-floor of a room for the family, a wash-house, and a pantry, and 
three sleeping-rooms over, with a neat and well-cultivated garden, in 
which the leisure hours of the husband being both pleasantly and pro- 
fitably employed, he has no desire to frequent the beer-shop or spend 
his evenings from home; the children are trained to labour, to habits 
and feelings of independence, and taught to connect happiness with 
industry, and to shrink from idleness and immorality : the girls make 
good servants, obtain the confidence of their employer, and get promoted 
to the best situations. The boys, at the termination of the year's en- 
gagement, spend the Christmas week's holiday comfortably under the 
roof of their parents; clothes suitable for the next year's service are 
provided, and the residue of the wages deposited in the savings' bank." 
