Page:The farm labourer in 1872.djvu/12

 run of a cow on my farm at 2s. 6d. a week, as they do in Northumberland. (This was received with very strong expressions of approval.)

"That is my scheme: I have since made one alteration in giving to the pigman every year the least fat of all my bacon pigs, instead of allowing him to keep one for himself; the consequence of which is that they are all so fat it is impossible to select the leanest. The system has been going on now for three years come next autumn, with the most satisfactory results. I have only lost one calf in that time, whereas I used formerly to think myself lucky if I only lost two a year; lambs and pigs in the same proportion. My land, that before never produced more than twenty-eight bushels to the acre, and generally twenty-five or twenty-six, last year gave thirty-one, and will, I believe average that for the future. I believe I am making money twice as fast as any farmer in Westshire; and I never knew before that it was possible for farming to make such profits. My men are perfectly satisfied and do double the work they did before, getting in addition, more than half their former income. I reckon that without raising wages above what I raised them when I first came, namely, from eleven to twelve shillings a week (and leaving privileges and cottage rents as they were) my ordinary labourers are getting from eighteen to nineteen shillings a week in this way:—