twenty-five concerned in agriculture. At the present time our fields have on the average only one man to cultivate twenty-seven acres of land--and that man is very badly paid for his trouble, be he farmer or labourer. [59. The figures are for 1901 and represent a fall of thirty per cent. since 1881.] But not only have the numbers of the agricultural population decreased, but the labourer no longer has any share as a rule in the land. Certainly the agricultural labourer, at any rate in the South of England, was much better off in the middle of the eighteenth century than his descendants were in the middle of the nineteenth. In fact in 1850 or so wages were in many places actually lower than they were in 1750, and in hardly any county were they higher. But meanwhile almost every necessary of life, except bread, has increased in cost, and more especially rent has risen, while on the other hand the labourer has lost many of his old privileges, for formerly his common rights, besides providing him with fuel, enabled him to keep cows or pigs and poultry on the waste, and sheep on the fallows and stubbles, and he could generally grow his own vegetables and garden produce. All these things formed a substantial addition to his nominal wages. In 1750 or so his nominal wages averaged 8_s._ or 10_s._ a week; in 1850 they only averaged 10_s._ or 12_s._, although in the latter period his nominal wages represented all he got, while in the former they represented only part of his total income. Since 1850, however, even agricultural wages have risen, the present average being 13_s._ or 14_s._ a week. The rise, such as it is, is due to some extent to Trade Unions, the leader and {208} promoter of which among agricultural labourers was Joseph Arch. This remarkable man was born in 1826, and in his youth and middle age saw the time when agricultural labour was at its lowest depth. Not only were wages low, being about 10_s._ or 11_s._ a week, but the worst evils of the factory system of child labour had been transferred to the life of the fields. The philanthropists seem to have overlooked the disgraceful conditions of the system of working in agricultural gangs, under which a number of children and young persons were collected on hire from their parents by some overseer or contractor, who took them about the district at certain seasons of the year to work on the land of those farmers who wished to employ them. The persons composing the gang were exposed to every inclemency of the weather, without having homes to return to in the evening, people of both sexes being housed while under their contract in barns, without any thought of decency or comfort, while the children often suffered from all the coarse brutalities that suggested themselves to the overseer of their labour. Their pay was of course miserable, though gangs flourished at a time when farmers and landlords were making huge profits. But the degrading