“Oh! very few—less now than ever; and there’ll be fewer before there’ll be more. The farmers don’t want to pay the labourers or to pay the landlords; they want the land and the work for nothing, sir,—they do indeed!”
“What does a farm-hand get,” I asked, “if he is hired for a long time?”
“Well, permanent men, they’ll get 6s. a week with breakfast and dinner, or 7s. maybe, with one meal; and a servant-boy, sir, he’ll get 2s. a week or may be 3s. with his board; but it’s seldom he gets it.”
“And what has he for his board?”
“Oh, stirabout; and then twice a week coorse Russian or American meat, what they call the ‘kitchen,’ and they like it better than good meat, sir, because it feeds the pot more.”
By this I found he meant that the “coorse meat” gave out more “unctuosity” in the boiling—the meat being always served up boiled in a pot with vegetables, like the “bacon and greens” of the “crackers” in the South.
“And nothing else?”
“Yes; buttermilk and potatoes.”
“And these wages are the highest?”
“Oh, I know a boy got 5s., but by living in his father’s house, and working out it was he got it. And then they go over to England to work.”