At the "Bright Celebration " at Birmingham,
June 13, 1883, Mr. Bright alluded to the report of a Commission,
in 1845, of the Anti-Corn Laws League, sent to visit Wiltshire,
Dorsetshire, and Somersetshire, to ascertain how much the farm
labourers received in wages, how they spent it, and how they contrived
to live upon it. This was before the repeal of the corn laws.
They visited eighty families of farm labourers. These families
comprised 400 persons--father, mother, and children. The wages
of the head of the family were 7s. to 8s. per week; the wife might
earn 6d. or Is. per week by a little washing, and a boy or girl
might earn a similar sum by frightening birds from the corn. The
whole income of a family, averaging five persons, did not exceed
9s. per week. In sixteen villages in the county of Dorset, it
was found that the wages averaged 8s. 4-1d. per week--to pay for
rent, food, and clothing. In Glastonbury, in Somersetshire, the
report stated that carpenters, joiners, and stone-masons were
paid at the rate of 14s. per week. You cannot get the farm labourer
now to do the same work under 14s. or 15s. per week. His condition
might be better, but, compared with what it was forty years ago,
there is no comparison ; if not a state of comfort now, it was
one of " absolute suffering" then. Take the working men and women
in our Lancashire factories. Mr. Bright gives the figures from
the wages-book of his own firm for two months of 1841 and two
months of 1881 ; the persons whose wages lie refers to are those
of young women and girls employed in the process of cotton spinning
and manufacture. Those who received 8s. per week in 1841, in 1881
received 13s. ; and the class that received 7s. 6d. now receive
15s. ; another class, that received 8s., now receive 14s. Boys
who had 5s. 6d. per week in 1841, received 9s. 6d. in 1881. Now
comes an important point for those to ponder over who contend
that " machinery " has not
