LABOUR AND THE POOR
THE RURAL DISTRICTS
[FROM OUR SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT]
THE SOUTHERN AND WESTERN COUNTIES
LETTER XXIX
Having disposed of the counties of Somerset, Devon, Cornwall, and Dorset, I proceed to give some account of the state and prospects of the labourer in Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex, and Kent. In doing so I shall first describe him as I found him in various parts of Hampshire, and in the western division of Sussex. I take these two together, because the prevailing industry in both is the same—farming, in its ordinary acceptation, being carried on, to the almost total exclusion of other kinds of rural employment, throughout the whole of the one county and the western moiety of the other. It is true that in some portions of Hampshire (as the neighbourhood of Petersfield), hop-gardens are to be met with; but, taking the county generally, the cultivation of the hop is rare and exceptional.
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From Winchester, I passed to the eastern borders of the county, by Bramdean and Petersfield. For fully half the way to Bramdean the road is flanked on either side by successive sweeps of down. This tract is consequently very thinly peopled, nor are the traces of human habitations visible, but at long intervals. Indeed, the only living things apparently inhabiting it are the rabbits, which swarm upon the estates of Lord Northesk. From the high land you at length rapidly descend upon a more sheltered and cultivated tract. This continues on to Bramdean, and thence, through an undulating, and picturesque region, to Petersfield, from which it also stretches, with, but little intermission, for two or three miles more, to the borders of Sussex. Here population again becomes scarce, and the farm labourer is to be found, as before, in his village, his hamlet, and his isolated hut, but with no perceptible change for the better in his condition. Seven shillings a week is again the average of his earnings; nor is it always that this rate is paid for a full day's work, the pernicious prevailing here of making a distinction between married and single men. The consequence is, that many single men, who do not choose to be underpaid for their labour, take to poaching, instead of to regular employment.
From Petersfield I entered West Sussex, by way of Rogate and Midhurst, and shortly afterwards proceeded to Petworth. From the Hampshire line, all the way to Petworth, the country is, with, but few exceptions, highly cultivated. The chief proprietors of the neighbourhood are Lord Egmont and Colonel Wyndham—the seat of the former being near Midhurst, that of the latter close to Petworth. In the immediate vicinity of both seats labourers are comparatively well off, both proprietors, finding a good deal of work for the labourers about their respective parks and mansions, and paying them somewhat higher than the farmers in the neighbourhood. Lord Egmont, I was informed, pays most of his labourers who are engaged in operations connected with the soil from 8s. to 9s a week. Colonel Wyndham pays them about the same. But the ruling rates around them are lower than this. From 7s. to 8s. a week is all that the farm labourer is receiving who is in the employment of the farmer. Some get 8s., but most only 7s. The farmers say they cannot pay more—and many of them talk of giving up their farms, as they say, it is impossible for them to go on at present prices, with swarms of game to support in addition. A few, I was told, had surrendered their farms, assigning as their reason the insupportable burden of the game. The proprietors in this neighbourhood are game preservers on the most extensive scale; and on all hands you hear complaints of the mischief done by the game, except from the poacher and those whom he supplies.
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In numerous instances throughout line from Petersfield to Petworth, the houses occupied by the labourers are of the most squalid and miserable character. The characteristic of all of them is that they are overcrowded. Emigration has been actively promoted from this district; but not withstanding this, the population has greatly increased, and, as I was informed, it presses now much more upon the house accommodation of the district than in 1841.
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Let us, however, come nearer home, and compare with the diet of the independent labourer in Hampshire or Sussex that of a workhouse situated in a district in which the condition of the labourer is analogous to his own. In the Wareham workhouse I found bread and a gruel the fare of every day for breakfast—the men getting seven and the women five ounces of bread. For dinner the inmates have animal food—four ounces each when it is meat, and three ounces when it is bacon, with a pound and a half of potatoes or other vegetables, three days in the week; for three more they have bread and soup, and on Sunday, they dine on suet or rice pudding, of which the men get fourteen and the women twelve ounces. We have an every night in the week. As already stated, the staple diet of the independent labour and his family is bread, turnips, parsnips, cabbage, and potatoes. He really tastes meat—occasionally tastes cheese—but seldom has a meal of it. What an anomaly is here! And, strange to say, although the union, by purchasing its edibles by contract, can procure them about 20 per cent. cheaper than the independent labourer can, who buys no more than he needs at a time, yet the independent labourer and his family manage to eke out an existence on about one-half that which it takes to support a pauper and his family in the workhouse. The wonder is, that every labourer in the land is not eager to pauperize himself.