Statement of the Provision for the Poor, and of the Condition of the Labouring Classes in a Considerable Portion of America and Europe / Being the preface to the foreign communications contained in the appendix to the Poor-Law Report

by Nassau William Senior

Wages and subsistence of foreign labourers.

We now add a digest of the foreign answers to the corresponding questions, and also to Question 6: “What can women and children under 16, earn per week in summer, in winter, and in harvest, and how employed?” a question as to which the English answers do not admit of tabular statement.

We have arranged the answers under seven heads: 1. Wages of artisans; 2. of agricultural labourers; 3. of labourers whom the author of the return appears not to have included in either of the other two classes; 4. of women; 5. of children; 6. of the labourer’s wife and four children; and 7. the food on which the supposed family could subsist, on their average annual earnings and means of living.