The farmer preferred to employ men with large families to keep them off the parish, but single young men, finding they were not wanted, contracted early and improvident marriages, to make sure of being "provided for by the parish." Population increased to beyond the requirements for local industry; the law of settlement was squeezed to the utmost against removals, and thus the farmer was creating the Nemesis he was seeking to flee from.
In many cases wages were as low as 8s. per week, the difference being made up according to the labourer's increasing family, and "if he makes more, still he receives his allowance in order that industry may not be discouraged."
At Over on one occasion, Mr. Robinson, the overseer, refused payment to men who would not keep their proper hours at work upon the road. "They complained to the Bench at Cambridge, and beat him as usual," so says the report, and not only that, but they returned home wearing favours in their hats and button-holes, and in the evening collected in a body before Mr. Robinson's house and shouted in triumph!
The report for the parish of Bottisham showed that the effect of the scale for single young men when not working, or receiving less wage than the scale, was that one family, consisting of man, wife, and seven children, were entitled to and were at that time receiving 19s. 6d. a week (over and above their earnings) from the parish, several of the sons being grown up!
"At Little Shelford," says the Commissioner, "a worse case than this was given me by the Acting Overseer, of one family, a man, wife, and four sons, living together, receiving 24s. weekly from the parish"!
The effect of this pauperising system could not fail to be very disastrous—it placed a direct premium upon idleness, as a man was sure of a living from the rates even if he did not work, and also a bounty upon wages, or an inducement for the farmer to pay a much lower wage than he could afford. The ultimate effect of both these circumstances was that there was such a large amount of pauper labour that it became necessary, in order to relieve the rates, to take care that such labour should be employed before any other. In some cases the unemployed men were actually put up to auction, or rather their labour, and an instance is mentioned in the Commissioners' report of ten men in one parish being knocked down to one farmer for five shillings, and that out of a body of 170 men, 70 were let in this manner! The parish also meddled and muddled in the labour market by making a contract with some individual to have certain work performed by the paupers at a given price, the parish paying the paupers. The making of the Newmarket Road Cutting, near Royston, was an instance of this.
Parochial affairs presented this extraordinary condition of things that for the industrious, thrifty man who was desirous of laying up something for a rainy day, there was no hope! Take the following, which I copy verbatim from the Commissioners' report—
"We have already quoted from Mr. Cowell's report a letter from Mr. Nash, of Royston, in which he states that he had been forced by the Overseer of Reed to dismiss two excellent labourers for the purpose of introducing two paupers into their place. Mr. Nash adds that of the men dismissed, one,
"Was John Walford, a parishioner of Barley, a steady, industrious, trustworthy, single man, who, by long and rigid economy, had saved about L100. On being dismissed, Walford applied in vain to the farmers at Barley for employment! It was known that he had saved money, and could not come on the parish, although any of them would willingly have taken him had it been otherwise! After living a few months without being able to get any work he bought a cart and two horses, and has ever since obtained a precarious subsistence by carrying corn to London for use of the Cambridge merchants; but just now the current of corn is northward and he has nothing to do; and at any time he would gladly have exchanged his employment for that of a day labourer, if he could have obtained work. No reflection is intended on the Overseers of Barley; they only do what all others are expected to do; though the young men point at Walford and call him a fool for not spending his money at a public-house as they do; adding that then he would get work"!
A somewhat similar instance is supplied to the Commissioners by Mr. Wedd who is spoken of in the report as "an eminent solicitor of Royston."