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THE AGRICULTURAL LABOUR FORCE IN SOME SOUTH-WEST CARMARTHENSHIRE PARISHES IN THE MID-NINETEENTH CENTURY THERE is little information forthcoming in books or professional journals on the size and composition of the agricultural labour force.1 Detailed information is available at sporadic intervals for specific farms and estates, but comprehensive information for the whole area, which would allow comparisons to be made, is less frequently available. It was not until 1921 that farmers were required to indicate on 4 June returns how many labourers were employed, and even this information is sometimes misleading for no distinction was made between different types of workers, and members of the farmer's own family were not included. There is, however, a source of information, which can be used in conjunction with other sources to give a reasonably detailed and accurate picture of conditions in the middle years of the nineteenth century. This is the manuscript book of the enumerators of the 1851 census. The date is a particularly convenient one for the study of the agricultural labour force, for the rural population was then about at its peak and mechanization had hardly begun. The numbers employed in agriculture within south- west Carmarthenshire were then at about their maximum level. It is an essential prelude to assess the reliability and limitations of the data presented in the Enumerators' Books before considering the results of the analysis. Each parish or township was enumerated separately and within each parish each household was numbered and clearly distinguished. For each member of the household, name, marital status, relationship to the head of the household, age, sex, occupation, and place of birth were given. Additional information of great relevance was given for farmers: the acreage farmed and the number of workers employed. Three main groups of agricultural workers can be distinguished in the occupation column. First, there are the farmers and their male relatives working on the farm. The principal difficulty in interpretation of this group concerns the prestige attached to the term 'farmer', which led to self-styling by many persons who only owned an acre or two, so an arbitrary level 1 Amongst the few articles written is one by Dr. June Sheppard in Agricultural History Review (1961). IX. part 1, 43-54. entitled 'East Yorkshire Agricultural Labour Force'. This section follows her outline plan in an attempt to see how far her generalizations and conclusions are applicable to a totally different physical area.