Page:The agricultural labourer (Denton).djvu/29

 in the hay and harvest time would surprise many of my hearers, though in the ordinary disbursements of a labourer—as ascertained by Mr. Purdy, of the Poor Law Commission—only one instance appears on record in which an expenditure in beer has been entered in the housekeeping expenses. I presume that case was the only one in which the wife had partaken of it as a necessary item of food. It is nevertheless true, that during harvest every able-bodied male labourer drinks beer which costs from 8d to 1s. a day, taking the average of harvests in the eastern corn-growing counties. I should be sorry to condemn beer as an article of food when properly made with good malt and hops, but that article, as I have just said, is seldom to be met with. The liquid sold as beer in rural districts satisfies thirst at the time, and provokes it as soon as drunk. I cannot speak too strongly against the prevailing excessive use of bad beer and cider. It is the bane of the farm labourer. In those counties in the west of England where cider is used instead of beer, the impoverished condition of the agricultural labourer is even worse than where beer prevails. His inferiority in work is mainly to be attributed to the bad character of the cider, and the excessive use made of it. There is some proof of the injurious influence of excessive drinking in the fact that in all the worst paid districts—where labour commands the lowest wages, and where those wages are all that the labour is worth—the publican and beer-seller bear a far larger proportion to the number of agricultural labourers than is the case in those districts where the wages are higher and where the labour is more valuable. We often hear mentioned the low rate of wages in the county of Dorset, and comparisons are made with the wages ruling in other