Page:The agricultural labourer (Denton).djvu/21

 know that the rate of agricultural wages throughout the country has increased within these last thirty-five years quite so much as 20 per cent., while the prices of those provisions and supplies which constitute the ordinary food and necessaries of life have, on the whole, decreased in the aggregate about 10 per cent. The price of meat and cheese has increased within the last few years at an extraordinary rate. This is partly to be accounted for by the prevalence of diseases amongst cattle, and partly by the fact that the labouring classes themselves consume a great deal of meat, which was not the case in the last generation; but it is a curious fact that just fifty years ago the price of the best meat was the same as at this moment, though if we only go back half that time—twenty-five years—it was about 40 per cent. cheaper. Inferior meat has not been liable to such changes, though there has been a variation of 2d. per pound within the period mentioned. Bread, though high in price at this moment, remains at much the same cost as it was before the repeal of the corn laws. Beer, though nominally cheaper, is so much worse in quality that we cannot regard it as actually reduced in cost. Tea, coffee, sugar, and groceries generally are 50 per cent. less than they were fifty years ago. Clothes and shoes are very much cheaper also, probably from 40 per cent. to 50 per cent. The cost of fuel, on the whole, is less than it was thirty-five years ago.

Though I hope I have shown that the position of the agricultural labourer is not so bad as many represent it to be, no one can say that it is quite satisfactory; but with the profits of farming as low and uncertain as they are, the only way to justify an increase of labourers' wages will be by rendering the value of labour greater than it now is. With the present ruling prices of farming produce,