WAGES OF ENGLISH FARM LABORERS.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2672, 12 October 1881, Page 2

WAGES OF ENGLISH FARM LABORERS.

A table has recently been published containing the weekly wages paid to English farm laborers from the year 1200 to the present time, the price of wheat per bushel during tiie same period the number of days’ work required to pay for a bushel of wheat, and the wholesale price of meat. It shows that the wages during the thirteenth century was about 2s Id a week. In the next century it advanced 7|d, and continued tinued to advance slowly, until the last century it hud reached 7s 9£d. The average for farm labor is at present 15s lOd per week. Wheat in the thirteenth century averaged 2s Had, or eight and a half days’ labor, a bushel. Now, wheat is worth one and a half day’s labor. In the six centuries meat has nearly trebled in price, and payment for labor has advanced more than sevenfold. Notwithstanding much more wheat and flour can now be obtained for a week’s labor, there is not nearly as mnch contentment among the laborers as there was six hundred years ago, and the laborer does not find subsistence as easy as in those early times. The reason, no doubt, is that his desires and ambitions have increased much more rapidly than the increase of wages, and the laborer of to day is not satisfied to live in the way that his ancestors did. If our imaginary wants are not satisfied, it affords as much discontent as a failure to procure the absolute necessaries. Misery is the consequence.—American paper.