“How many hours do you work?” I asked.
“From daylight to dark, sor,” was his answer, first peering around before speaking, to be sure that no one heard him. In free Britain it is dangerous for him to talk even of so small a matter as wages.
“And what are your wages?”
“Ten pence a day, sor.”
“Are you satisfied to work for so many hours for so little money?”
“Troth, sor, it wuld be betther for my ould mother if I cud get that the year around.”
A BIT OF HISTORY.
Ten pence is about nineteen cents; and understand he was not boarded. Out of that pittance he had to furnish his own food and his own bed. And yet he would have been thankful to the man who would have given him steady work at that price.
To know something of what landlordism really is, and how it all came about, read the following little history of the Barony of Farney:
In 1606 Lord Essex, who had “obtained” a grant of the Barony of Farney, leased it to Evar McMahon, at a yearly rent of two hundred and fifty pounds. And this was a mighty comfortable rent, for, understand, under the Crown grants the one receiving it was only charged for arable land, the bog and mountain land adjacent, then esteemed worthless, being thrown in.