migrate south, promising them a minimum wage of 18s. a week. When the Dorset men learnt what the north countrymen were getting, they were filled with a spirit of emulation, and commenced drinking a greater quantity of beer, that they might be able to work as hard. But they soon saw their error, when they found that their competitors were living on good bread and meat, while they were half starved on bread, tobacco, and bad beer or worse cider. After a time they became convinced that a little butcher's meat was worth all the beer in the world, and under this diet became so efficient that Mr Denton was enabled to reverse the experiment, and take the Dorset men to do work for him in Yorkshire.
With all their poverty, and the absolute necessity that every child in the house should do its utmost to add to the family purse, Mr Stanhope,' the Government Commissioner, says, "I noticed with pleasure the great desire for instruction among the labouring poor in this county, one proof of which may be found in the fact that the proportion of parishes with night schools is unusually large. In Dorset there are forty-four night schools in 100 ecclesiastical districts; while in Kent, where the labourer is so well off in a money point of view, there are only twenty-six in an equal number."
But night schools can do but little when a boy goes to work at eight years of age, or frequently earlier, getting up with his father at four or five o'clock in the morning, and stumping about over the fields from six until two with no cessation excepting little halts for meals. Not only is his mind deadened, but his poor little body is permanently injured.
Compare the shapely forms of the young farmers with those of the stunted young labourer, and the injury inflicted by compelling an immature body to such labour as agricultural work will be seen at a glance. Compare the stalwart, jovial forms of the elderly farmers with that of the rheumatic, mishapen forms of the old labourers, and the evil result, not only of over-early work, but of a lifetime of poor and insufficient food and bad lodging, will be manifest Add to all this that they suffer from a want unknown to the northern labourer—a good fire. At Milton Abbas the vicar says, "Fuel is so scarce that the families as a rule never have a fire at meal-times except in the winter."
