them at least) are hired
by the year or half-year, and cannot be summarily sent along unless for
misconduct. Wages have recently been increased by the farmers of
Wiltshire voluntarily and without pressure from threatened strikes. It
is often those who receive the highest wages who are the first to come
to the parish for relief. It is not uncommon for mechanics and others to
go for relief where it is discovered that they are in receipt of sick
pay from the yard club, and sometimes from two friendly societies,
making 18s. a week. A manufacturing gentleman informed me that the very
men whom he had been paying L8 a week to were the first to apply for
relief when distress came and the mills stopped. It is not low wages,
then, which causes improvident habits. The only result of deporting
agricultural labourers to different counties is to equalise the wages
paid all over England. This union-assisted emigration affords the
improvident labourer a good opportunity of transporting himself to a
distant county, and leaving deeply in debt with the tradesmen with whom
he has long dealt. I am informed that this is commonly the case with
emigrating labourers. A significant fact is noted in the leader of the
_Labour News_ of the 16th of November; the return of certain emigrants
from America is announced as "indicative that higher quotations are not
always representative of greater positive advantages." The agricultural
labourer found that out when he returned from the factory at 15s. per
week to farm labour at 12s. I am positive that the morality of the
country compares favourably with that of the town. I was particularly
struck with this fact on a visit to the Black Country. One of the worst
parishes for immorality in Wiltshire is one where glovemaking is carried
on; singularly enough, manufactures and immorality seem to go together.
"The Son of a Labourer" says that all the advantages the labourer does
possess are owing to the exertions of the clergy; pray who support the
clergy but the farmers?

I think that the facts I have mentioned sufficiently demonstrate that
the farmers and the landlords of Wiltshire have done their duty, and
more than their mere duty, towards the labourers; and only a little
investigation will show that at present it is out of their power to do
more. Take the case of a farmer entering a dairy-farm of, say, 250
acres, and calculate his immediate outgoings--say fifty cows at L20,
L1,000; two horses at L25, L50;