In a letter to my father, 2 December 1849, my grandfather sends a message to a friend who had been talking of the good old times, and then describes the bad old times that he remembered here. “I have sold potatoes for 9_d._ per bag and hog sheep for 2_s._ 9_d._ a head. [A bag of potatoes is 160 lbs., and hogs are sheep between one and two years old.] Such was the distress among farmers then that labourers were put up to auction by the parish authorities, and hired for 6_d._ to 9_d._ per day.” Under the Speenhamland plan 6_d._ a day (3_s._ a week) was the minimum for a single man, and 9_d._ a day (4_s._ 6_d._ a week) was the minimum for a married man without a family. No doubt the 6_d._ or 9_d._ was quite as much as farmers could afford to pay when prices were so low; but men with families could not subsist on that. In their case (to use the modern terms) the economic wage was less than a subsistence wage; and the parish authorities paid them a subsistence wage and took the economic wage, the balance coming from the rates. In agricultural districts the ratepayers were chiefly landowners, parsons with glebe and tithe, farmers, millers, and blacksmiths and others who made things for the farms; and thus the contribution from the rates came indirectly out of agriculture. It was, in fact, a general charge upon the industry, based on the employing classes’ means, but applied according to the labouring classes’ needs, so that no labourer was worse off for having a big family. No doubt it also was a subsidy to agriculture from ratepayers who were wholly unconnected with the land; but few such people could be found in country places. At the census in 1801 the parish of Lustleigh had a population of 246, and 236 of them were classed as agricultural. Subsidies to any industry are open to abuse; but in a choice of evils this may be the lesser of the two. At present, if an economic wage is less than a subsistence wage, the industry slows down or stops, production is decreased or ceases, and hands are unemployed; and then these hands receive subsistence wages out of rates and taxes. But in a subsidy the public would only pay the difference between the economic and subsistence wages, all hands would be employed and production would go steadily on.