Nicola Verdon

The rural labour market in the early nineteenth century: women's and children's employment, family income, and the 1834 Poor Law Report

This article revisits a familiar source - the 1834 Poor Law Report - to provide a fresh overview of the regional map of female and child labour in the early nineteenth-century countryside. Patterns of employment in domestic industry and agricultural labour (particularly haymaking, weeding, and harvesting), as well as data on contributions of labourers to the annual family income, both confirm and contrast with the findings of previous studies which use alternative sources (farm account books and settlement examinations for instance). Orthodox accounts of rural employment and wage patterns should not be accepted uncritically. The research adopts an empirical approach to the qualitative evidence contained in the report, calling for a reassessment of the way historians use official nineteenth-century documents and offers a blueprint for future analysis of similar contemporary printed sources.

Adaptable and Sustainable? Male Farm Service and the Agricultural Labour Force in Midland and Southern England, C.1850-1925

This article argues that farm service was an adaptable and sustainable system of hiring labour in areas of midland and southern England after 1850, having much in common with the model recently identified for northern England and Scotland. Analysing the Census Enumerators Books from selected parishes in seven counties in 1851, 1871, and 1891, we reveal an intricate pattern of farm service ‘survival’ both within and between counties. We then use a range of reports printed between the 1860s and 1920s to examine the national picture. The later regional persistence of farm service has implications for broader debates on the rural workforce and social relations.

Agricultural labour and the contested nature of women’s work in interwar England and Wales

This article uses a case-study of agriculture to explore the range of anxieties and contradictions surrounding womens work in the interwar period. National statistics are shown to be inconsistent and questionable, raising questions for historians reliant on official data, but they point to regional variation as the continuous defining feature of female labour force participation. Looking beyond the quantitative data a distinction emerges between traditional work on the land and processes. The article shows that women workers in agriculture provoked vigorous debate among a range of interest groups about the scale, nature, and suitability of this work. These groups, such as the National Federation of Womens Institutes, the Womens Farm and Garden Association, and the National Union of Agricultural Workers represented a range of social classes and outlooks, and had diverse agendas underpinning their interest. Consequently womens agricultural labour is exposed as a site of class and gender conflict, connecting to wider economic and cultural tensions surrounding the place of women in interwar society.

The Agricultural Labourer

This chapter explores the complexities behind the term ‘agricultural labourer’, focusing on those who worked on the land on a full-time basis. First, the core or constant men—those employed in a supervisory capacity and/or with livestock—and second, those termed ‘ordinary’ labourers—a disparate group who encountered a variety of employment practices and developed a range of skills—are discussed. The nature of the everyday labour process is analysed, and how these were shaped by region, age and gender, before the chapter moves on to consider how far, and why, these changed in the era before the First World War. The impact of new farm machinery, of agricultural depression and of changing aspirations among farmworkers all emerge as significant.

Farm Labour and the Second World War

This chapter begins by considering the steps taken by the government to ensure that the supply of resident farm labour was maintained during the war, and the conditions under which these men and women worked. Although work on the land still was defined by physical, hard labour and the seasonal rhythms of the agricultural calendar, the more widespread use of tractors and other machinery altered production processes. It is argued that the use of substitute labour, particularly the Women’s Land Army, prisoners of war, schoolchildren and adult volunteers, was considerable (and essential). Nevertheless, the fact that these workers proved a source of fascination to both contemporaries and historians has deflected attention from the resident agricultural workforce, who occupied a central position in the domestic wartime food production strategy.

Farm Labour during the First World War

This chapter begins by considering the nature and level of labour shortages in agriculture during the war. It shows that these were not uniform across the English counties and resulted in several modifications to the traditional hierarchy of farm labour that had defined prewar agriculture. The use of substitute labour, both those sourced by the government and its agencies, such as soldiers, prisoners of war and the Women’s Land Army, and those already resident, notably village women and children, is analysed. The impact of new technology and the significance of the introduction of a minimum wage for agricultural workers in 1917 are examined. This chapter shows that although the war elevated farmworkers reputation, pay and conditions, these were not shared equally.

The Interwar Years

The interwar period was marked by continuities and contradictions. The statistical data shows that the number of workers in agriculture continued to fall, but this was not consistent or linear, and the experiences and identities of farmworkers continued to be shaped by gender, age and region. In some areas of farm production scientific thinking and modern methods were transforming work practices, with the replacement of horse power with motive power; however, in other areas traditional techniques persisted and mechanisation played little part. The uneven impact of change in the arable, dairying and horticultural sectors is examined here. The newly reconstituted Agricultural Wages Boards offered some protection after 1924, but this chapter shows that not all workers received the same treatment or assistance.

The Casual and Seasonal Workforce

Some types of farming, particularly arable agriculture, meant high seasonal labour demands that could not be met by regularly employed staff. Groups of additional workers, engaged on a short-term basis, filled the need and are the focus of this chapter. Women and children were an important component of the casual workforce, which, in eastern counties, resulted in the widespread use of gang labour. Migrant workers, such as the skilled Irish harvesters, were a feature of mid-Victorian agriculture, and groups of English men also traversed well-known routes within and across county boundaries to take on mowing, shearing, threshing and hedging contracts. This chapter explores how much economic depression, new agricultural technologies, state intervention and migration stymied demand and regulated the supply of casual and seasonal workers before 1914.

The Postwar Years

One of the most notable changes in the agricultural industry after the Second World War was the decline in the full-time regular workforce. In the late 1940s English agriculture still employed around half a million men and women; by the 1980s it was a little over 100,000. This chapter shows that the comprehensive adoption of agricultural machinery increased labour productivity while reducing requirements for farmworkers. For those workers who remained, machinery and intensive farming methods changed the rhythm and character of work in the arable and livestock sectors. This chapter shows that a small number of farmworkers enjoyed job security, and for many more workers job satisfaction was high; however, for the majority, wages were kept low by the continual reduction in the workforce.

Introduction: The Farmworker, Past and Present

In numerical terms farmworkers were the most significant occupational group in mid-Victorian England. At the beginning of the twenty-first century their numbers had dwindled to less than 100,000 men and women working on a full- or part-time basis. This introduction provides the backdrop to these stark figures and outlines the book’s aims and structure. Historiographical trends are placed alongside an overview of the broad economic and social changes that shaped and modified the farm workforce over time and space. The main themes that run throughout the book—occupational structure, technological change and the impact of age, gender and region—are introduced, as are some of the key primary sources that inform its content, including census data, Parliamentary Papers and autobiographical writings.