d thrown open by the proprietor to all the village.

It is the labourer himself who will not rise. In a village with which I
am acquainted great efforts have been made by a farmer and a gentleman
living near to provide proper school instruction for the children. One
labourer was asked why he did not send his children to school. He
replied, "Because he could not afford it." "But," said the farmer, "it
is only threepence altogether." "Oh, no; he could not afford it." The
farmer explained to him that the object was to avoid a School Board,
which, in other places, had the power to fine for not sending children
to school. "No, he could not afford it." The farmer's books show that
this labourer, his wife, and two children received 28s. 6d. per week,
his cottage rent free, and a very large garden at a low rent. Yet he
could not afford the 3d. a week which would enable his children
ultimately to take a better position in the world! The same farmer, who
is a liberal and large-minded man, has endeavoured, without success, to
introduce the practice of paying in cash instead of beer, and also the
system of payment for overtime. The men say no, they would rather not.
"In wet weather," they say, "we do no work, but you pay us; and if we
work a little later in harvest, it only makes it fair." They would not
take money instead of beer. In another case which came under my personal
observation in the middle of last summer, a farmer announced his
intention of paying in cash instead of allowing beer. In the very press
of the haymaking, with acres upon acres of grass spoiling, his men, one
and all, struck work because he would not give them beer, and went over
to a neighbour's field adjacent and worked for him for nothing but their
share in the beer. If labourers work longer hours in harvest (corn), it
is because it is piece-work, and they thereby make more money. I contend
that the payment in kind, the beer, the gleanings, the piece-work, the
low and nominal cottage rent, the allotment ground and produce, and the
pig (not restricted to one pig in a year), may fairly be taken as an
addition to their wages. I am informed that in one parish the cottage
rents vary from 10d. to 1s. 2d. per week; nearly all have gardens, and
all may have allotments up to a quarter of an acre each at 3d. per lug,
or 40s. per acre. I am also informed of a labourer renting a cottage
and garden at 1s. per week, the fruit-trees in whose garden produced
this year three