Welsh Journals

THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY WALES A CHARACTERISTIC feature of the Welsh farming system throughout the nineteenth century was the absence of any pronounced class division between tenant farmers and their labourers. This situation was basically a consequence of the small farm units, whose tenant occupants were scarcely distinguishable from their labourers in their standard of living and mode of life. The small Welsh farmer worked the land alongside his labourers, and scarcity of farms meant that farmers' sons often became labourers of the indoor servant type on neighbouring farms. Labourers, for their part, frequently achieved their ambition of becoming tenant farmers, for the small Welsh holdings could be taken with only little capital. Often the first stage in this process was for the labourer, while still working as an agricultural wage earner, to acquire a small holding. Thus, farmers and labourers shaded imperceptibly into one another.2 Close contact on the social plane arose from their worshipping together in non- conformist chapels and their mixing in the farm houses at meal times.3 This general absence of class cleavage in Wales contrasted markedly with the situation in most areas of England, where the two classes were separate and distinct and where the larger farms meant that the prospects of an agricultural labourer becoming a farmer were remote.4 Agricultural wage earners in Wales throughout the nineteenth century were divided into two basic categories. Firstly, there were the farm servants of both sexes, children (entering service from ages varying between nine and thirteen years) and adults. They were boarded and lodged on the farm, hired by the year or, less commonly, the half year, and unmarried.5 A similar situation prevailed through- out the century in Scotland under the 'farm kitchen' system and the 'bothy' system.6 This farm servant class disappeared in many 1 Third Report on the Employment of Women and Children in Agriculture, Parliamentary Papers (hereafter P.P.), 1870, vol. XIII, p. 6; Fifth Report of the Agricultural Labourer, P.P., 1894, vol. XXXV, Section B, p. 217. 1 Royal Commission (hereafter R.C.) on the Agricultural Labourer, vol. II, Wales, P.P., 1893-94, vol. XXXVI, Summary Report, p. 6. Welsh Land: The Report of the Welsh Land Enquiry Committee, Rural (1914), p. 185. 4 G. Nicholls, 'On the Condition of the Agricultural Labourer; with suggestions for its Improvement', Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England (hereafter J.R.A.S.E.), VII (1846), p. 4. "P.P., 1893-94, vol. XXXVI, Summary Report, p. 8. •P.P., 1894, vol. XXXV, Mr. Little's report on Scotland, p. 230; H. J. Little, 'The Agricultural Labourer', J.R.A.S.E., XIV. 2nd series (1878), 790.