The great difference between the wages of the north and the south is a clear proof that the wages of the agricultural labourer are not dependent on the prices of agricultural produce, for those were the same in both regions. It was unmistakably due to the greater demand for labour in the north.
The housing of the labourer was, especially in the south, often a black blot on English civilization. From many instances collected by an inquirer in 1844 the following may be taken. At Stourpaine in Dorset, one bedroom in a cottage contained three beds occupied by eleven people of all ages and both sexes, with no curtain or partition whatever. At Milton Abbas, on the average of the last census there were thirty-six persons in each house, and so crowded were they that cottagers with a desire for decency would combine and place all the males in one cottage, and all the females in another. But this was rare, and licentiousness and immorality of the worst kind were frequent.[645]
As for the farmer, the stock raiser was doing better than the corn grower. The following table shows the rent of cultivated land per acre, the produce of wheat per acre in bushels, the price of provisions, wages of labour, and rent of cottages in England at the date of Young's tours, about 1770, and of Caird's in 1850[647]:
Rent of Produce of cultivated land Wheat Price per lb. of per acre. per acre. Bread. Meat. Butter.
1770 13s. 4d. 23 1-1/2d. 3-1/4d. 6d. 1850 26s. 10d. 26-3/4[646] 1-1/4d. 5d. 1s.
Price of Wool Cottage Labourer's wages per lb. rents. per week.
1770 5-1/2d. 34s. 8d. 7s. 3d. 1850 1s. 74s. 6d. 9s. 7d.
Thus in eighty years the average rent of arable land rose 100%, the average wheat crop 14%, while the price of bread had decreased 16%. But meat had increased 70%, wool over 100%, butter 100%. The chief benefit to the farmer therefore lay in the increased value of live stock and its products, and it was found then, as in the present depression, that the holders of strong wheat land suffered most, which was further illustrated by the fact that the rent of the corn-growing counties of the east coast averaged 23s. 8d. per acre; that of the mixed corn and grass counties in the midlands and west, 31s. 5d.