The relations of rents, wages and profits in agriculture, and their bearing on rural depopulation by Nicholson J. Shield (Joseph Shield) 1850-1927

Author:Nicholson, J. Shield (Joseph Shield), 1850-1927
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Agriculture, Agriculture, Rent, Agricultural laborers, Cities and towns
Publisher: London, S. Sonnenchein & co., lim.; New York, C. Scribner's sons
Published: 1906-03-25T05:00:00+00:00

Even after the Act of 1834 had abolished the allowance system, the roundsman system, and the labour rate system, the ideas at the root of the old Poor-Law still prevailed to a great extent. A report of 1839 says that various contrivances had enabled the predominant interest in eadi locality to contribute to a common fund from which they did not derive an equal benefit. Very commonly, however, the farmers themselves, in the forties, gave partial work to men for whom they had no real need, and kept up a surplus supply of labour at low wages, simply to keep the men off the rates. It is definitely stated in the Report on the Burdens on Land in 184G that in order to reduce the poor-rate the farmers in many parishes employ more hands than the economical working of the land requires. Farmers on large holdings gave evidence before this Committee that they found it

cheaper to give some employment on the land rather than leave the families of the men to come on the rates. Consequently, preference was given to the men with large families, partly, no doubt, because some work was got out of the children, but mainly on account of the saving to the rates. In the same way some of the farmers refrained from using new labour-saving machinery, and threshing with the flail was continued simply to give employment. We also read that this employment of surplus labour was in part regarded as an insurance against rick-burning, at that time the popular method of forcible persuasion. Gaird describes a similar state of things in the English agriculture of 1850-r. In some districts, he says, the farmers divided up the surplus labour. In Wiltshire, in which the wages have always been very low, Caird says that both farmers and labourers

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