The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-11-23 00:00:00

THZ WILTSHIRE LABOIJRZR.

The following sketch of the position of the "Wilt.
shire Labourer," sent to The rinser for publication,
will not be uninteresting to many of our readers
The Wiltshire agricultural labourer is not so highly paid
as those of Northumberland, nor so low as those of Dorset;
but in the amount of his wages, a. In intelligence and
general goeitiiin, he may fairly be token as an average
specimen of his class throughout • large portion of the
kingdom.
As a man, he is ustuWy strongly built, broad-shouldered,
and massive in frame, but lila appearance is spoilt by the
clumsiness of his wak and the want of grace to his move-
ment. Thoegh quite m large in muscle, it is very doubt-
ful if he possesses the strength of the seamen who may be
seen lounging about the ports. There is a want of firmness,
• certain disjointed style, about his limbs, and the muscles
themselves have not the hardness and tension of the
sailor's. The labourer's muscle is that of a cart-
bow, his motions lumbering and sloee. His style of
walk I, aimed by f ono. tug the plough in early childhood,
when the weak limbs Mid it a hard labour to pull the
heavy nailed boots from the thick els), nil. Ever afterwards
he walks as if it were Cu exertion to lift his logs. Die food
may, perhaps, have something to do with tho deadened
slowness which seems to pervade everything he does—there
seems a lack of vitality about him. It consists chiefly of
bread and cheese, with bacon twice or thrice a week, varied
with onions, and if he be a milker ion some farms) with
a good "tuck-out "at his employer's expense on Sun-
days. On ordinary days he dines at the fashionable hour of six
or seven in the evening—that Is, about that time his cottsge
scents the road with a powerful odour of boiled cabbage,
of which he eats an immense qumtity. Vegetables
are Inalrumries, and a large garden, therefore, lathe greatest
blessing he can have. Ile eats huge onions raw; he has
no Idea of flavouring his food with them, nor of making
those smeary, and hxvigng messes or vegetable soups at
which the French peasantry are so 'lever. In Picardy
I have often dined in • peasant's cottage, and thoroughly
enjoyed the excellent soup he puts upon the table for
his ordinary meal. To dine in an English labourer's
cottage would be impossible HI. bread is generally
good, certainly. but his bacon is the cheapest he can
bug at amen second-elms shops--elly, soft, wretched
stuff ; his vegetables are cooked In detestable style, and
eaten saturated with the pot liquor. Pot liquor is • fa-
vourite soup. I hare known cottmers actually apply at
farmer.' kitchesui lot only for the pot limor In which meat
has been saddened, but for the water In which potatoes
have beim boiled—potato liquor—arid sup it up with avidity.
Acel this not in times of dearth or scarcity, but rather as a
reiish. They never buy anything but bacon ; never butcher's
meat. Philanthropic ladle., to my knowledge, have tle•
monstrated over anti over again even to their limited capa-
cities that certain parts of butchers' meat can be bought
just as cheap, and will make more savoury and nutritive
food and even now, with the present high price of meat,
• a certain portion would be advantageous. In vain; the
labourers obstinately adhere to the pig, and the pig only.
When, however, an opportunity does occur the amount of
food they will oat Is something astonishing. Once a year, at
the village club dinner, they gormandise to repletion, is
one instance I knew of a man eating a plate of roast beet
(and the slices are cut enormously thick at these diminish •
plate of boiled beef, then another of boiled mutton, and
then a fourth of roast mutton, and a filth of ham. He said
he could not do much to the bread and cheese ; but didn't he
go Into the pudding! I have even heard of men stuffing to
the fullest eltent of their powers, and then retiring from the
table to an emetic of mustard and return Ins second gorging.
There is scarcely any limit to their power of absorbing
beer. I have known reapers and mowers make it their boast
that they could lie on their backs and never take the wooden
bottle (in the shape of • small barrel) from their lip, till
they had drunk • gallon, and from the feats I have seen I
verily believe it a fact. The beer they get is usually poor and
thin, though sometimes in harvest the farmers bring out •
taste of strong liquor, but not till the work is nearly aver;
for from this very practice of drinking enormous quantities
of small beer the labourer cannot drink more than • very
limited amount of good liquor without getting tipsy. This
Is rally he so speedily gets inebriated at the alehouse. While
Mowing and, reaping many of them lay in • small east.
• They are much better clothed now than formerly. Corduroy
trousers and slops are the flaunt style. Smockfrocks are
going out of use, except for milkers and feggers. Almost
every labourer hsa his Sunday suit, very often really good
clothe., sometimes glossy black, with the regulation
" chimney-pot." His unfortunate walk betrays him, deem
how he will. Since labour has become so expensive it has
become a common remark among the farmers that the
labourer will go to church in broadcloth and the masters
If. smock-frocks. The labourer never wears gloves—that
has to come with the march of the times; but be is particu-
larly choice over his necktie. The women must dress in the
fashion. A very respectable draper in an agricultural dis-
Mixt was complaining to me the ether day that the poorest
class of women would have every thing in the f ashionable
style, let It change as often as it would. In former times,
if he laid iu • stock of goods suited to tradesmen, and
farmers' wives and daughters, if the fashion changed, or
they got out of date, he could dispose of then, rosily to the
servants. Now no such thing. The qu.lity did not matter
so much, but the style must be the style of the day—no sale
for remnants. The poorest girl, who had not get two yards
of flannel on her back, must have the same style of dress as
the equire's daughter—Dilly Verde ns, chignons, and parasols
, for ladles who can work ell day reaping hi the broiling sun
, of August ! (Horse, kid, for hands that milk the cows !
The cottages now are infinitely bester than they were.
' There is scarcely room for farther iinproveruents In the
; cottages now erected upon estates. They hove tnree bad-
, roo[llll anti every appliance and comfort compatible with their
necessarily small else. ills only the cottages erected by the
labourers themaelvem on waste plot t of ground vein ii ere
, open to ribt,i.dion. Three he builds hiretelf are, Indeed, at a
role. tilis,rubie hut,. di-grae; ful to a Cattalo. country. I

teen an instance ben,r, me at this moment where a'man
built a cettage with two rooms and no staircase or upper
apartment+, end in those two rooms eight persons lived
and slept—himself and wile, grownup daughters, and chil-
dren. Thete was not a scrap of garden attached, not enough
to grow half a-dozen onions. The refuse and sewage was flung
into tne road, or filtered down a ditch into the brook which
Supplied that part of the village with water. In another
case at one time there was a cottage in which 12 persons
lived. This had tipper apartments, but ao low was the ceil-
ing that a tell man could stand on the floor, with his head
right through the opening for the staircase. and see along
the upper floor under the beds! These squatters are:the curse
of the community. It is among them that fever and kindred
Infectious diseases break out; it is among them that
wretched couples are even beat double with rheumatism
and affections of the joints caused by damp. They have sites,
been known to remain so long, generation after generatiou,
in these wretched hovels that at lad, the lord of the manor
having neglected to claim quit-rent, they can defy him, and
claim them as their own property, and there they stick, eye-
sores and blots, the fungi of the land. The cottages erected
by farmers or by landlords are now, one and all, fit and
proper habitations for human beings, and I yerllg believe
It would be impossible throughout the length anti breadth of
Wiltshire to find a single bad cottage on any large estate, so
well and so thoroughly have the landed proprietors done
their work. On all farms gardens are attached to the cot-
tages, in many instances very large, and always sufficient to
produce enough vegetables for the resident. In villages the
allotment system has been greatly extended of late years, and
o is been totted most beneficial, both to owners and tenants.
As u rule the allotments are let at a rate which may be
t ,ken as £4 per annum—a sum which pays the landlord very
ay.ll, and enables the labourer to remunerate himseq. in
one village which came under my observation the clergyman
of the parts, has turned a pont,. of his glebe land into all it-
nients—a most excellent and nobl., example, which cannot
be too widely 10l owed or too much extolled. Ile is thus
enahlerl to benefit almost every one of his poor pal ishioners,
and yet without destroying that sense of independence which
Is the great characteristic of a true Eeglishman. Ile has
leaned a bock of rules slid conditioes under which these
allotments are held, and he thm places a strong check upon
thunkeeness and dissolute habits, loch:Opium in whisk is a
sure wey to lose the portion of ground. There is merely
an end to the benefits of the at otment system. In villages
there cannot be extensive gardens, and the allotments supply
: ther place The eetra produce above that which supplies
I the table and pays the rent is easily disposed of in the next
town, and places many additional comforts in the labourer's
reach. The refuse goes to help support and fatten the la-
bourer's pig, which brings him in profit enough to pay the
rent of Ida cottage, an the pig, In turn, manures the allot-
ment. Some towns have large common lands, held under
certain conditions; such are Malmesbury, with 600 acres,
Tetbury (the common lend of which extends two miles)
both these being arable, dm These are not exactly in the
sae of labourers, but they are in the hande of a class to
which the labourer often rises. Many labourers have fruit
trees In their gardens which, In some sesaons, Prove veil
profitable. In the present year, to my knowledge, a labourer
sold £4 worth of apples; and another made £3 10s, of the
produce of one pear tree, pears being scarce.
To come at last to the difficult question of wages. In
Wiltshire there has been no extended stnke, anti very few
meetings upon the subyect, for the simple reason that the
ftitators can gain no hold upon A county where, as a mass,
the labourers are well paid. The common day-labourer re.
calves 10s., us., anti 125. a week, according to the state of
supply and demand for labour in various districts, and, if
hemilks, ls. more, making las. a week, now common wages.
These figures are rather below the meek ; I could give us-
stance, of nitwit higher pay. To give a 1/00ti idea of the
wages paid I will take the ease of a bill farmer (arable,
Marlborough Downs), who paid this last summer during
harvest, IS,. per week per man. Ills reapers often earned
105. day ; enuuli to pay their year's rent in a weak. These
men lived in cottages on the Vann, with three bedrooms
each, and some larger, with every modern appliance each
having • [olden of a imerter of an acre attached and close
at hand, for which cottage and garden they paid Is. per
week rent. The whole of these cottages were insured by
the farmer himself, their furniture, etc., in one lump, and
the lasuranee polity cost him, as nearly as possible, Is. 3d.
per cottage jor year. For this he deincted is. per year
each from their wages None of the men would have in-
sured makes he had Insisted upon doing it for them. These
men had 14,111 EiX to eight quarts nf hoer per man (over and
above their IS, a week; during harvest every day. In spring
nod autumn their wages are much incr.+ d by toned
work, hoeing, rec. In winter the farmer draws their coal
for them in his waggons, a tliatance Of eight miles from the
nearest wharf, enahling them to get it at eost prhe. This
ii no slight a !vantage, for, at the present hien price of coal,
isle sold, delivered in the village., at Os. per cwt. Many
who cannot affotd it ill the week tatty a quarter of a cwt.
on Saturday night to c rok their Sunday's dinner with, for
6d. This Is at the rate of £2 per ton. Another gentleman,
a large steam cultivator in the Vale, whose name is often
before the public, informs me that his books show that he
paid £lOO in one year in cash to one cottage for labour,
showing the advantage the labourer possesses over the me-
chanic, since trio wife and &HO 010 add to his income. Many
farmers pay £s', and £6O a year for beer drunk by their
labourers—a serious addition to their wager. The railway
cempmies and other* who employ mechaffics do not allow
them any beer. The allowance of a good cottage and a
quarter of an acre of garden fir Is per week is not singular.
Many who were at the Autumn Mancetvres of the present
year rney remember having a handsome row of homes
rather than cottages, pointed out to them as inhabited by
Isbouren at Is. per e eek. In the immediate neighbourhood
of large manufacturing towns Is. (id. a week is sometimes
paid but then these cottagss would in such poeitions
readily let to mechanics for 311., 45., and eves ss. per week.
There was a great outcry when the Duke of Marlborough
Issued an order that the cottages on his estate should in
future only he left to such men as woeked mmn the farm.
whrro those cottages were situated. In reality this was the
very greatest blessing the Duke could have contorted upon
the agricultural labourer; for It Insured him a good cottage
at a nearly nominal rad and close to his wo-k whereas in
many instances previously the cottages on the Nome had
Men let at a high rate to the mechanics, and the labourer
had to walk miles before he got to his labour. Cottsgm are
not erected by laedowners or by fainters as paying specu-
tattoos. It is well known that the condition of things pre-
vents the agricultural labourer from being able to pay a
sufli dent rate to be a fair percentage upou the sum ex-
pended. In one instance a landlord has built some cottages
for his tenant, the tenant paying acertain amount of interest
on the sues invested by the landlord. Now, although this is
• matter of arrangement, sod not of speculation—that Is,
although the interest paid by the tenant is a low percentage
upon the money laid out, yet the rent paid by the labourers
inhabiting these cottages to the tenant does not reimburse
bins what he pays his landlord as interest—not by • consider-
able margin. But then he has the advantage of his labourers
closet° his work, always ready at hand.
Over and above the actual cash wages of the labourer,
which are now very good, must be reckoned his cottage and
garb., and often a small orchard, at a nominal rent, his beer
at his master's expense, piecework, gleaning after harvest,
.to, which alter his real position very materially la
Glocestershire, on the Cotswolds, the beet paid labourers are
the shepherds, for in that great sheep country much tenet
Is reessd in them. At the an. t
nual
purse M
auctionsofahmrig win' are held . the
the shepherd of the flock, Into which every one who attends
is expected to drop a shilling, often producing £5. The
sheitherds on the Wiltshire dowse are also well paid, eine-
eMlly In lambing time, when the greatest watchfulness and
care are required. It has been stated that the labourer has
no chance of rising from ids position. This is sheer I,lllt.
He ha. very good opportunities of tieing, and often dose
rise, to my knowledge. At this Remain; moment I could
mention a person who dm dean from a posillon titra
equal to that at a labourer, not only to have • farm
but to plane Ma sone I/1 fume Another has jut entereJ
on a latm ; and several more are on the blab coal to that