664 The Farm, Labourers of England and Wales. 
an amount is so precisely stated as to include a fraction of 
a penny, it is always the weekly equivalent of an annual 
total. 
Except when actual receipts by particular men are given, 
the estimates of average earnings must be regarded as dependent 
to a great extent upon the judgment of the Assistant Com- 
missioner, or upon that of some witness upon whom he relied 
for correct information. In any case such payments in kind as 
free cottages, board, the use or keep of a cow, milk, beer, fire- 
wood, coal, and bacon, where included in the takings, had to 
be valued, although there was usually a safe guidance as to 
cottage rents and board in the customary payments for cottages 
let in the district, and for men boarded by foremen or other 
persons on behalf of the farmers. The differences between the 
ordinary weekly wages and the average weekly earnings may 
seem too small in some cases to include a fair allowance for all 
extras for piecework, harvests, payment in kind, and perquisites ; 
but it must be borne in mind that in some parts of the country 
the extra earnings at piecework are extremely small, and 
payments in kind also ; while it is also to be remembered that 
hired servants living in farmhouses usually have nothing extra 
but beer, or beer-money, or food in harvest or haytime. Thus 
the differences between the ordinary weekly wages and the 
average weekly earnings are much greater in some counties 
than in others, and, as might be supposed, the difference is 
greater in arable than in pastoral counties. 
As a rule, the wages of casual labourers ai*e not included in 
the summaries given in the reports. Such wages are often 
higher than those of regular men, but still their recipients 
usually earn less in the course of the year. The evidence as to 
shepherds’ wages and earnings is not generally full enough to 
render it desirable to include them in the table. With respect 
to farm bailiffs, their receipts vary so greatly even in the same 
districts that no regular return on this point could be expected. 
A farm bailiff may be a head man on a farm of moderate size, 
getting only a shilling or two more than an ordinary labourer, 
or an educated farmer managing the home farm of a duke, and 
receiving two or three hundred pounds a year. But in several 
of the reports the wages of “ foremen ” (usually head horsemen, 
of whom there are sometimes two or three on a large farm, one 
being often employed on a small farm, especially in the North 
of England) are given, and their wages or average earnings are 
inserted, in some cases, in the table, because without them the 
range of horsemen’s earnings would be under-estimated. With 
these explanations I present on pp. 666-669 the table, which 
