The truth is that enclosures and the new system of farming had set up two classes in antagonism to allotments, the large farmer, who disliked saucy labourers, and the shopkeeper, who knew that the more food the labourer raised on his little estate the less would he buy at the village store. It had been to the interest of a small farmer in the old common-field village to have a number of semi-labourers, semi-owners who could help at the harvest: the large farmer wanted a permanent supply of labour which was absolutely at his command. Moreover, the roundsman system maintained his labourers for him when he did not want them. The strength of the hostility of the farmers to allotments is seen in the language of those few landlords who were interested in this policy. Lord Winchilsea and his friends were always urging philanthropists to proceed with caution, and to try to reason the farmers out of their prejudices. The Report of the Poor Law Commission in 1834 showed that these prejudices were as strong as ever. ‘We can do little or nothing to prevent pauperism; the farmers will have it: they prefer that the labourers should be slaves; they object to their having gardens, saying “The more they work for themselves, the less they work for us.”’[291] This was the view of Boys, the writer in agricultural subjects, who, criticising Kent’s declaration in favour of allotments, remarks: ‘If farmers in general were to accommodate their labourers with two acres of land, a cow and two or three pigs, they would probably have more difficulty in getting their hard work done—as the cow, land, etc., would enable them to live with less earnings.’[292] Arthur Young and Nathaniel Kent made a great appeal to landlords and to landlords’ wives to interest themselves in their estates and the people who lived on them, but landlords’ bailiffs did not like the trouble of collecting a number of small rents, and most landlords preferred to leave their labourers to the mercy of the farmers. There was, however, one form of allotment that the farmers themselves liked: they would let strips of potato ground to labourers, sometimes at four times the rent they paid themselves, getting the land manured and dug into the bargain.[293]
The Select Vestry Act of 1819[294] empowered parishes to buy or lease twenty acres of land, and to set the indigent poor to work on it, or to lease it out to any poor and industrious inhabitant. A later Act of 1831[295] raised the limit from twenty to fifty acres, and empowered parishes to enclose fifty acres of waste (with the consent of those who had rights on it) and to lease it out for the same purposes. Little use was made of these Acts, and perhaps the clearest light is thrown on the extent of the allotment movement by a significant sentence that occurs in the Report of the Select Committee on Allotments in 1843. ‘It was not until 1830, when discontent had been so painfully exhibited amongst the peasantry of the southern counties that this method of alleviating their situation was much resorted to.’ In other words, little was done till labourers desperate with hunger had set the farmers’ ricks blazing.
THE REMEDY ADOPTED. SPEENHAMLAND
The history has now been given of the several proposals made at this time that for one reason or another fell to the ground. A minimum wage was not fixed, allotments were only sprinkled with a sparing hand on an estate here and there, there was no revolution in diet, the problems of local supply and distribution were left untouched, the reconstruction of the Poor Law was abandoned. What means then did the governing class take to tranquillise a population made dangerous by hunger? The answer is, of course, the Speenhamland Act. The Berkshire J.P.’s and some discreet persons met at the Pelican Inn at Speenhamland[296] on 6th May 1795, and there resolved on a momentous policy which was gradually adopted in almost every part of England.
There is a strange irony in the story of this meeting which gave such a fatal impetus to the reduction of wages. It was summoned in order to raise wages, and so make the labourer independent of parish relief. At the General Quarter Sessions for Berkshire held at Newbury on the 14th April, Charles Dundas, M.P.,[297] in his charge to the Grand Jury[298] dwelt on the miserable state of the labourers and the necessity of increasing their wages to subsistence level, instead of leaving them to resort to the parish officers for support for their families, as was the case when they worked for a shilling a day. He quoted the Acts of Elizabeth and James with reference to the fixing of wages. The Court, impressed by his speech, decided to convene a meeting for the rating of wages. The advertisement of the meeting shows that this was the only object in view. ‘At the General Quarter Sessions of the Peace for this county held at Newbury, on Tuesday, the 14th instant, the Court, having taken into consideration the great Inequality of Labourers’ Wages, and the insufficiency of the same for the necessary support of an industrious man and his family; and it being the opinion of the Gentlemen assembled on the Grand Jury, that many parishes have not advanced their labourers’ weekly pay in proportion to the high price of corn and provisions, do (in pursuance of the Acts of Parliament, enabling and requiring them so to do, either at the Easter Sessions, yearly, or within six weeks next after) earnestly request the attendance of the Sheriff, and all the Magistrates of this County, at a Meeting intended to be held at the Pelican Inn in Speenhamland, on Wednesday, the sixth day of May next, at ten o’clock in the forenoon, for the purpose of consulting together with such discreet persons as they shall think meet, and they will then, having respect to the plenty and scarcity of the time, and other circumstances (if approved of) proceed to limit, direct, and appoint the wages of day labourers.’[299]
The meeting was duly held on 6th May.[300] Mr. Charles Dundas was in the chair, and there were seventeen other magistrates and discreet persons present, of whom seven were clergymen. It was resolved unanimously ‘that the present state of the poor does require further assistance than has been generally given them.’ Of the details of the discussion no records have come down to us, nor do we know by what majority the second and fatal resolution rejecting the rating of wages and substituting an allowance policy was adopted. According to Eden, the arguments in favour of adopting the rating of wages were ‘that by enforcing a payment for labour, from the employers, in proportion to the price of bread, some encouragement would have been held out to the labourer, as what he would have received, would have been payment for labour. He would have considered it as his right, and not as charity.’[301] But these arguments were rejected, and a pious recommendation to employers to raise wages, coupled with detailed directions for supplementing those wages from parish funds, adopted instead.[302] The text of the second resolution runs thus: ‘Resolved, that it is not expedient for the Magistrates to grant that assistance by regulating the wages of Day Labourers according to the directions of the Statutes of the 5th Elizabeth and 1st James: But the Magistrates very earnestly recommend to the Farmers and others throughout the county to increase the Pay of their Labourers in proportion to the present Price of Provisions; and agreeable thereto the Magistrates now present have unanimously Resolved, That they will in their several divisions, make the following calculations and allowances for the relief of all poor and industrious men and their families, who, to the satisfaction of the Justices of their parish, shall endeavour (as far as they can), for their own support and maintenance, that is to say, when the gallon loaf of second flour, weighing 8 lbs. 11 oz. shall cost one shilling, then every poor and industrious man shall have for his own support 3s. weekly, either produced by his own or his family’s labour or an allowance from the poor rates, and for the support of his wife and every other of his family 1s. 6d. When the gallon loaf shall cost 1s. 4d., then every poor and industrious man shall have 4s. weekly for his own, and 1s. 10d. for the support of every other of his family.
‘And so in proportion as the price of bread rises or falls (that is to say), 3d. to the man and 1d. to every other of the family, on every penny which the loaf rises above a shilling.’
In other words, it was estimated that the man must have three gallon loaves a week, and his wife and each child one and a half.
It is interesting to notice that at this same famous Speenhamland meeting the justices ‘wishing, as much as possible, to alleviate the Distresses of the Poor with as little burthen on the occupiers of the Land as possible’ recommended overseers to cultivate land for potatoes and to give the workers a quarter of the crop, selling the rest at one shilling a bushel; overseers were also recommended to purchase fuel and to retail it at a loss.
The Speenhamland policy was not a full-blown invention of that unhappy May morning in the Pelican Inn. The principle had already been adopted elsewhere. At the Oxford Quarter Sessions on 13th January 1795, the justices had resolved that the following incomes were ‘absolutely necessary for the support of the poor, industrious labourer, and that when the utmost industry of a family cannot produce the undermentioned sums, it must be made up by the overseer, exclusive of rent, viz.:—