Page:The land, the people, and the coming struggle .djvu/12

 sent into the fields to work sometimes before they were seven years old, often before eight years, and nearly always about that age. Even now, in Somersetshire and Dorsetshire, agricultural labourers' wages average about 11s. per week. Lord Walsingham claimed them at from 13s. to 15s. The Prince of Wales pays 13s. And with education thus rendered practically impossible, we find the organs of "blood and culture" taunting the masses with their ignorance. We allege that the mischief is caused by those who exact so much for rent, and waste so much good land for pleasure, that no fair opportunity for happy life is left to the tiller of the soil. While the condition of the agricultural population is as thus stated, it cannot be pretended that sufficient compensation is found in the general prosperity of the artisan classes. Probably there are at this moment in England and Wales more than half-a-million able-bodied paupers—that is, men able to work, who cannot get work in a country where millions of acres of land fit for cultivation lie untilled.

In Plymouth, in 1870, one out of every fifteen persons was in receipt of pauper relief; and we fear that throughout England and Wales it would be found that, at the very least, one in every twenty is in the same position, while, in addition, many thousands struggle on in a sort of semi-starvation misery. During the last half-dozen years the figures have been improved by the restrictions on out-door relief, but the improvement is but a surface-polish. At Cardiff the most fearful revelations have been made before the Parliamentary Commissioners as to the state resulting from the folly or criminality of some of the large capitalists. In this part of Wales, by paying wages at long intervals, men who were sometimes justices of the peace and large landowners, in 1870 compelled their labourers to ask advances as of favour when they were really entitled to payment as of right. Then, by a dexterous evasion of the Truck Act, the men were forced to a "tommy shop," where the advance was made in goods instead of cash. Men swore before the Commissioners that it was with the greatest difficulty they could get a few shillings of ready money, and that, to obtain it, they were often compelled to re-sell the goods forced on them at a loss. The shop being sure of its customers, the women have been kept waiting for nine hours for their turn, and have had to assemble two, and sometimes four, hours before the opening of the shop, this