170 
EARNINGS OF ORDINARY AGRICULTURE 
LABOURERS IN VGRE Aa sp Rhian 
A report on the wages and earnings of agricultural 
labourers in the United Kingdom has been issued by the 
Board of Trade. The report, which has been drawn up by 
Mr. Wilson Fox, of the Labour Department, is based, 
so far as concerns the year 1898, with which it mainly deals, 
upon returns furnished by the Chairmen of Rural District 
Councils in England and Wales, and by the Local Govern- 
ment Board Inspectors in Ireland, supplemented by statements 
supplied by 1,857 employers of agricuitural labourers in 
England, and by nearly 1,100 employers in Scotland. 
The agricultural labourers in England may be divided 
broadly into two classes—those who are engaged in the charge 
of animals, and those who are not (i.e., ordinary labourers). 
The latter class formsin most English counties the great major- 
ity of the total number of agricultural labourers; except in 
Northumberland, Cumberland, Westmorland, North Lance- 
shire, and Durham, where, owing either to special systems of 
farming, to particular customs, or to the small size of farms, 
this is frequently not the case. In Northumberland and 
Durham the ploughmen or hinds, who are classed in the 
report as ordinary labourers, are strictly men in charge of 
horses, but as they constitute the greater number of the farm 
servants in these counties their wages are treated as those of 
ordinary labourers. In Cumberland, Westmorland, and 
North Lancashire ordinary agricultural labourers, as known 
in other parts of England, are in a considerable minority; in 
these counties the greater number of the farm servants are 
unmarried men who lodge and board in the farmhouses and 
usually undertake all kinds of work whenever needed. Diffi- 
