town generally need their cheap
drudges. Hence, at an earlier age than the boys, the girls are taken off
their parents' hands and become self-supporting. True, it is long before
they can earn much more in money than suffices for their own needs in
clothes and boots--they cannot send many shillings home to their
mothers; but no doubt a family may be found here and there enriched to
the extent of a pound or two a year by the labour of the girls.

Putting the various items together, it might seem that in favourable
circumstances there would be some twenty-three or twenty-four shillings
a week for a family to live on all the year round. But it must be
remembered, first, that the circumstances seldom remain favourable for
many months together; and, second, that the greater number of families
have to do without those small supplementary sums provided by the work
of children, or by odd jobs, or by the good wages of hop-drying, and so
forth. Nor is this the only deduction to be made. As I have already
explained, in the cases where money is most needed--namely, where there
is a family of little children--the mother cannot go out to work, and
the income is reduced to the bare amount earned by the father alone. And
these cases are very plentiful, while, on the contrary, those in which
the best conditions prevail are very scarce. Taking the village all
through, and balancing bad times against good ones, I question if the
income of the labouring class families averages twenty shillings a week;
indeed, I should be greatly surprised to learn that it amounted to so
much. In very many instances eighteen shillings or even less would be
the more correct estimate.

One other item remains to be recognized, although its value is too
variable to be computed with any exactness in money and added to the sum
of an average week's income. What is the worth to a labourer of the
crops he grows in his garden? It depends, obviously, on the man's skill,
and the size of the garden, and the clemency of the seasons--matters,
all of them, in which any attempt at generalization must be received
with suspicion. All that can be said with certainty is that most of the
cottages in the valley have gardens, and that most of the cottagers are
diligent to cultivate them. But when the circumstances are considered,
it will be plain that the value of the produce must not be put very
high. The amount of ground that can be worked in the spring and summer
evenings is,