22 SEPTEMBER 1894, Page 16

THE FARM-LABOURER'S WAGES.

LT() THAI EDITOR OF THE " SPTIOTATOR."1

SIR,—A Devonshire farmer tells me that fifty years ago a. labourer was reckoned to cost weekly, 9s. (the price of a bushel of wheat), and that he now costs 152. (the price of five bushels). The labourer's wife fifty years ago got 3s. a couple for her fowls, she now gets 6s., whereas the cost of feeding them is not half what it. was then. The price of butcher's meat affects a Devonshire labourer very little, he chiefly eats pork and bacon ; his pig costs him half of what it did to fatten,. and if he sells any he gets nearly double. Compared with the first half of the century, a labourer's life is almost.