In his report to the Board of Agriculture in 1807 Vancouver says that agricultural wages had not changed in Devon since 1795. He puts the daily wage at 1_s._ 2_d._ and a quart of cider for the regular hands, and 1_s._ 4_d._ and the quart for casual hands, or 8_s._ a week instead of 7_s._, as they had none of the allowances the others had--ground for pig-keeping, and corn for bread-baking, and other things, at less than market price; and he mentions that the 7_s._ could be commuted into 3_s._ 6_d._ and maintenance: pages 361 to 363 and 446. And while a man was earning his 7_s._ on the land, his wife could be earning 3_s._ 6_d._ at her spinning wheel, and there might be other spinners in the family: pages 446 and 464. But he adds that this home industry was being destroyed by factories; so that whole families had now become dependent on their earnings on the land. Agriculture was thus called upon to pay a wage that would support men’s wives and families, just when it could not pay enough to support unmarried men. The industrial North was a necessity, but it meant destruction for the agricultural South; and many people here expressed themselves as forcibly as Cobbett, _Cottage Economy_, section 232, “The lords of the loom, the crabbed-voiced, hard-favoured, hard-hearted, puffed-up, insolent, savage and bloody wretches of the North, assisted by a blind and greedy Government, have taken all the employment away from the agricultural women and children.” Instead of fixing a maximum wage, as in Devon, the magistrates for Berks drew up a plan, 6 May 1795, ‘the Speenhamland plan,’ which was copied by other counties but never had the force of law. (The old Roman town of Spinæ was a mile or two from Newbury, and Quarter Sessions held at Newbury were nominally held at Spinæ, then known as Speenhamland.) The plan was drawn up clumsily. It allowed too little for the wage-earner and too much for his family: he had from 3_s._ to 5_s._ a week according to the cost of living as measured by the price of corn, but he also had 1_s._ 6_d._ to 2_s._ 6_d._ for his wife and each one of his children. Thus a man with a wife and seven children had twice as much as a man with a wife and two children, and five times as much as an unmarried man, though the cost of living would not be five times as much or even twice as much. That wrecked the plan: it meant paying one man a great deal more than another for getting through the same amount of work. Still, the old plan took account of facts, whereas the present notion is to fix a wage that is sufficient for an average family. This leaves big families short, and also takes money out of industry to pay unmarried men the cost of families they have not got.