Country rambles in England : $b or, Journal of a naturalist — John Shaqi
Country rambles in England : $b or, Journal of a naturalistKnapp, J. L. (John Leonard)
History
Country rambles in England : $b or, Journal of a naturalist
Knapp, J. L. (John Leonard)
Natural history -- England; Natural history -- Outdoor books
This village and its neighboring parishes, by reason of the peculiar
culture carried on in them, and the natural production of the district,
afford the most ample employment for their laboring inhabitants; nor
perhaps could any portion of the kingdom, neither possessing mineral
riches, manufactories, or mills, nor situate in the immediate vicinity
of a great town, be found to afford superior demand for the labor,
healthy employment, and reasonable toil of its population. Our lime-
kilns engage throughout the year several persons; this is, perhaps, our
most laborious employ; though its returns are considered as fair. In our
culture, after all the various business of the farms, comes the potato-
setting; nor is this finished wholly before haymaking commences.
Teaseling succeeds; the corn harvest comes on, followed shortly by the
requirements of the potato again, and the digging out and securing this
requires the labor of multitudes until the very verge of winter. Then
comes our employment for this dark season of the year, the breaking of
our limestone for the use of the roads, of which we afford a large
supply to less favored districts. This material is not to be sought for
in distant places, or of difficult attainment, but to be found almost at
the very doors of the cottages; and old men, women, and children can
obtain a comfortable maintenance by it without any great exertion of
strength, or protraction of labor. The rough material costs nothing: a
short pickax to detach the stone, and a hammer to break it, are all the
tools required. A man or healthy woman can easily supply about a ton in
the day; a child that goes on steadily, about one-third of this
quantity; and as we give one shilling for a ton, a man, his wife, and
two tolerable-sized children, can obtain from 2_s._ 8_d._ to 3_s._[4]
per day by this employ, the greater part of the winter; and should the
weather be bad, they can work at intervals, and various broken hours,
and obtain something—and there is a constant demand for the article. The
winter accumulation is carted away as the frost occurs, or the spring
repair comes on. Our laborers, their children and cottages, I think,
present a testimony of their well-doing, by the orderly, decent conduct
of the former, and the comforts of the latter. There are years when we
have disposed of about 3000 tons of stone, chiefly broken up for use by
a few of our village poor; if we say by twenty families, it will have
produced perhaps seven pounds[5] to each, a most comfortable addition to
their means, when we consider that this has been obtained by the weak
and infirm, at intervals of time without more than the cost of labor,
when employment elsewhere was in no request.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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