younger girls are employed in the farm houses to look after children, and to do other light work. Boys from seven years of age (I have seen them even younger,) to twelve are employed in bird-scaring, taking care of poultry, following the pigs in the acorn season, herding cattle, getting wood for the house, and the like. As they get stronger they lead the horses and oxen at the plough, make hay, and hoe turnips, and by fourteen or fifteen years they begin to hold the plough, attend to the stable, help the carter and drive the team. After that time they commence mowing, reaping, hedging, ditching, and the other difficult operations performed by the farm laborers. The hours of labor for boys are the same as for men and women; their wages are from thirty-six cents to $1,10 a week, with a pint of cider a day. They are taught to love drink from their earliest age, and a few years so confirms them in the taste, that they rarely, if ever, get rid of it in after life.
Such is an outline of the employment of women and children in agriculture in these counties, and the effect which it is calculated to produce upon their physical and moral condition. The labor, taken by itself, would seem to be comparatively harmless; but, taken in connection with the general condition of the laborer, it tends in a great degree to depress that which is already by no means exalted. The early age at which most of the children are taken from school, prevents their getting even the rudiments of education. They are too early associated in promiscuous labor with men and women, in whose vices they become adepts long before they have attained the years of maturity.
The almost constant employment of women in the fields has many bad effects upon their families; their cottages are not properly attended to, their children are neglected, clothing is allowed to get dirty and torn, and many mat-
