ne of the most capable
in the district--who was glad that summer to go haymaking at half a
crown a day. And yet two or three years earlier he had certainly been
earning from fourpence halfpenny to fivepence an hour, or, say, from
three and sixpence to four shillings for a day's work. In 1909 the
low-water mark was reached; the following spring saw a slight revival,
and at present the average may be put at three shillings. For this sum a
fairly good man can be got to do an ordinary day's work of nine hours in
the vegetable-garden or at any odd job.

The builders' labourers are rather better paid--if their employment were
not so intermittent--with an average of from fourpence halfpenny to
fivepence an hour. Carters, too, and vanmen employed by coal-merchants,
builders, and other tradesmen in the town, are comparatively well off
with constant work at eighteen or twenty shillings a week. The men in
the gravel-pits--but that industry is rapidly declining as one after
another the pits are worked out--can earn perhaps five shillings a day
if at piece-work, or about three and sixpence on ordinary terms. From
this sum a deduction must be made for tools, which the men provide and
keep in repair themselves. It is rather a heavy item. The picks
frequently need repointing, and a blacksmith can hardly do this for less
than twopence the point. The gravel-work, too, is very irregular. In
snow or heavy rain it has to stop, and in frost it is difficult. More
than once during the winter of 1908-09, it being a time of great
distress, gravel-pit workers came to me with some of those worked
flints--the big paleoliths of the river-gravel--which they had found and
saved up, but now desired to sell, in order to raise money for pointing
their pickaxes. I have wondered sometimes if the savages who shaped
those flints had ever looked out upon life so anxiously as these
neighbours of mine, whose iron tools were so strangely receiving this
prehistoric help.

At one time upwards of forty men in the parish had more or loss constant
work on one of the "ballast-trains" which the South-Western Railway kept
on the line for repairing the permanent way. The work, usually done at
night and on Sundays, brought them in from eighteen to twenty-four
shillings a week, according to the hours they made. I do not know how
many of our men are employed on the railway now, but they are certainly
fewer. Some years ago--it was when the great trade depression had
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