be
much more helpful than an allotment. The superior or more skilled
workmen,[701] such as the wagoner, stockman, or shepherd, earns in
agricultural counties like Herefordshire from 14s. to 18s. a week, and
in manufacturing counties like Lancashire from 20s. to 22s. a week,
with extras such as 3d. a lamb in lambing time. At the lower wages he
often has a cottage and garden rent free.

The improved methods of cutting and harvesting crops have so enabled
the farmer to economize labour that the once familiar figure of the
Irish labourer with his knee-breeches and tall hat, who came over for
the harvest, has almost disappeared. Women, who formerly shared with
the men most of the farm work, now are little seen in most parts of
England at work in the fields, and are better occupied in attending to
their homes.

The divorce of the labourer from the land by enclosure had early
exercised men's minds, and many efforts were made to remedy this.
About 1836 especially, several landowners in various parts of England
introduced allotments, and the movement spread rapidly, so that in
1893 the Royal Commission on Labour stated that in most places the
supply was equal to or in excess of the demand.[702] However, previous
Allotments and Small Holdings Acts not being considered so successful
as was desired, in 1907 an effort was made to give more effect to the
cry of 'back to the land' by a Small Holdings and Allotments Act[703]
which enables County Councils to purchase land by agreement or take it
on lease, and, if unable to acquire it by agreement, to do so
compulsorily, in order to provide small holdings for persons desiring
to lease them. The County Council may also arrange with any Borough
Council or Urban District Council to act as its agent in providing and
managing small holdings. The duty of supplying allotments rests in the
first instance with the Rural Parish Councils, though if they do not
take proper steps to provide allotments, the County Council may itself
provide them.

It is a praiseworthy effort, though marked by arbitrary methods and
that contempt for the rights of property, provided it belongs to some
one else, that is a characteristic of to-day. That it will succeed
where the small holder has some other trade, and in exceptionally
favoured situations, is very probable; most of the small holders who
were successful before the Act had something to fall back upon: they
were dealers, hawkers, butchers, small tradesmen