Returns to Labour

Abstract

THE most noteworthy revised interpretations of our period probably relate to the condition of the agricultural labourer. We are still learning much of interest about the dismal level of farm worker income, parish relief, and labour mobility or immobility in the post-Napoleonic period. Two highly important critical investigations by Mark Blaug1 have modified our views of the operation of the Old Poor Law. He urges that this was not really an instrument which demoralised the working class, over-stimulating their numerical increase and bringing about the reduction of wages. Instead, the excessive, stagnant pool of labour, especially in the arable south and east, itself pressed wages down, threatening the workers’ calorific intake and hence their energy to perform their tasks. The Old Poor Law, though its out-relief was hardly generous enough to encourage breeding, fought against this tendency by building up wage levels so that, with each labourer able to put forth some reasonable effort, a bigger total of work got done than would have been done at the competitive wage. Market rates of pay, unsubsidised by the Speenhamland system, would have been driven too low in many over-peopled areas for farm workers to be able to buy enough food to operate efficiently.