| NUMBER OF AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS IN ENGLAND AND WALES. | |||
| 1871. | 1881. | 1891. | 1901. |
| 996,642 | 890,174 | 798,912 | 595,702 |
The figures for 1901 are from Summary Tables, Parliamentary Blue Book (C, d. 1, 523), p. 202, Table xxxvi.
[694] According to the Report of the Royal Commission on Labour, 1893-4, the labourer was 'better fed, better dressed, his education and language improved, his amusements less gross, his cottage generally improved, though generally on small estates there were many bad ones still'.—Parliamentary Reports, 1893, xxxv. Index 5 et seq.
[695] Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners (1897), xv. 53, 85. Sir Robert Giffen suggested that the decline in the price of wheat pay be partly attributed to the great increase in the supply and consumption of meat.
[696] Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners (1897), xv. App. iii. Table viii. From an examination of the accounts of seventy-seven farms, the average expenditure on labour was found to be 31.4 per cent. of the total outlay.
[697] Parliamentary Reports, Commissioners (1897), xv. 106. But see above, p. 271.
[698] 59 & 60 Vict., c. 16; I Edw. VII, c. 13.
[699] Rural England, ii. 539. Yet the census returns of 1871, 1881, and 1891 gave no support to the idea that young men were leaving agriculture for the towns. See Parl. Reports (1893), xxxviii. (2) 33.
[700] The author speaks from information derived from answers to questions addressed to landowners, farmers, and agents in many parts of England, to whom he is greatly indebted.
[701] It is, however, a fallacy to assume, as is nearly always done, that the ordinary farm labourer, at all events of the old type, is unskilled. A good man, who can plough well, thatch, hedge, ditch, and do the innumerable tasks required on a farm efficiently, is a much more skilled worker than many who are so called in the towns.