Page:The Laboring Classes of England.djvu/49

 a low position in the social scale; and the urgency of immediate wants, and the desire to keep out of the workhouse, compel him too frequently to drive his children to labor at an early age. It is a distressing fact, that the wife and children are obliged to accompany the husband in his labor in the fields. The calling of the mother away from the charge of her household, and the intrusting domestic matters to very young girls, are attended with consequences which the reader may imagine better than I can describe. The cottager cannot be said to have a comfortable home. The common practice of keeping as many lodgers as can be crammed into an apartment during the hot season, does not improve the health or comfort of the inmates. While the food and clothing of the laboring classes in this district is much better than in some others, it is by no means such as these industrious people ought to be able to obtain in return for their industry. But while the laborer has much to answer for his own improvidence, his master can by no means be exempt from a share of the evil. In addition to a want of comfortable cottages, which every landlord ought to feel it his duty and interest to provide, the laborer is half robbed of his scanty earnings by the truck system.

It is a common practice in these counties to pay the wages, both of men and women, by a check drawn upon the miller of the village, who is generally related to the farmer, the laborer getting part of his wages in flour and part in money; or, it may be, that the miller again hands him over to the grocer; and thus the poor man in general pays from 25 to 30 per cent more for his victuals than in justice and honesty he should. Nor is this all; he pays the highest price for the worst goods, and dares not complain. This crying evil ought to be removed.