The weekly clarion. [volume] (Jackson, Miss.) 1863-1882, 1873-12-04
Condition of English, Agricultural
EAsKDur4.Es
BY JAMES PARTON.

Nearly all the land in Great Britain is
owned by lords and squires who let it out
in farms, varying from 100 to 1 900 acres.
The tenants of these farms are usually
themselves men of capital, who seldom
work with their hands. Frequently,
they are rich men, of luxurious habits,
who go out with the hounds on thorough
bred horses Of their own, send their
daughters to fashionable boarding schools,
and bring up their sons to professional
life The land is titled by laborers, OF
whom there are in Great Britain some
thing less than 100000 Sometimes
these men are engaged by the year, and
live in the farmers house, where they
even sit at his table, and have as good
fare as himself. But the great majority,
including almost all the married men,
occupy small cottages, and are paid
weekly wages.
These laborers are at the bottom of
the social scale in England. Not half OF
them can read or write. None of them
have vote. Their wages range from
eight shillings to fourteen shillings a
week; the average, until recently, being
about eleven. Eleven English shillings
is equivalent, in our present currency,
to about So, out of which rent has
usually to be paid of two shilIings week.
In many instances, also, the farmer does
not employ the laborer in bad weather,
and during parts Of the winter. 1t thus
frequently happens that man has to
support wife and six children, to-pro-
them with food, clothing, fire and medI-
cine, upon a weekly sum of money equiv
alent to about two of our dollars.
In England, it is true, many articles of
the first necessity are very much cheaper
than with US. Clothes do not cost more
than third as much as they do here,
while provisions Of the coarser kinds are
about the same price as in our own rural
districts. But if these men could get
their clothes for nothing, how deplorable
the condition of family obliged to sup
ply all It's other wants upon less than
thirty cents a day The man must go
to his work soon after sunrise, and work
all day, with much less nourishment in
the way of meat than an American boy
of twelve generally eats at his breakfast.
In short, the agricultural laborers of
England have been for many years past
among the most wretched and hopeless of
/ the human race.
This know from personal observation.
[ have seen them in their two reOmed
cottages, pinched and anxious. | have
seen them turned oatof their cottages in
time of agricultural distress, when
they would build novels of sod in the
high road for the shelter of their families.
1 have seen them gathered into huge
poorhouses. Nor are they, as many
suppose, so very stupid or incapable.
Some of them are; but many have very
good minds of their own, though uneul
| tivated and almost all of them are
peaceable and friendly in their DISPOSE
ton. If any one were to offer me the
ownership, in fee simple, of the whole
island of Great Britain, upon condition
Of my living in parishinhabited chiefly
BY these oppressed and poverty stricken
laborers, / would not accept the gift.
The mere spectacle of their despairine
poverty, their ignorance, their mean
abodes, their horrid tap rooms, where
they drown their senses in supplying
beer, would shame the possession of pa
radise itself.