century is rife with tragic disaster to all the parties interested, and teems with the histories of ruined men.
Those, however, through whose eyes we should do well to look at the agriculture of this country, are not so much the landlords, or even the farmers, both of whom may have other resources to assist them in a crisis, as the labourers. For these latter are not only, of course, so far more numerous, but upon them falls the heat and burden, and if their calling fail them they must be sucked into the slum and the alley, being seen no more of Merry England.
The money wages of the agricultural labourer of England average 14s. 6d. a week. His extra earnings, and the value of his allowances in kind, are calculated to average 3s. a week, so that altogether he earns 17s. 6d. a week, though the men who tend the animals obtain a trifle more. That is not very brilliant.
To look at the labourer not as he is, but as he tends to be, it will appear that one current of events is carrying him to a better, and another to a worse, fortune.
As regards the first, it seems that the causes which produced the rural exodus have somewhat spent their force. That exodus is generally supposed to have been due to the great fall of prices about 1880 caused by the opening up of the American wheatfields, and the cheapening of transport, which by forcing farmers to give up
