4521. The account books for a common farmer, may be a cash-book for all receipts and payments, specifying each; a ledger for accounts with dealers and tradesmen ; and a stock book for taking an inventory and valuation of stock, crop, manures, tillages, (and every thing that a tenant could dispose of or be paid for on quitting his farm) once a year. Farming may be carried on with the greatest accuracy and safety, as to money matters, by means of the above books, and a few pocket memorandum books for laborers' time, jobs, &c. With the exception of a time-book, such as we have before described (3140.), we should never require more, even from a proprietor's bailiff; to many of whom the nine forms just given (4512.) would only puzzle;-to some we have known them lead to the greatest errors and confusion. No form of books, or mode of procedure, will enable a farmer to know whether he is losing or gaining but that of taking stock. Valuing produce consumed, and crediting the farm with it, is in practice nonsense; and the same may be said of various items in most of these nine forms. An approximation to the profits yielded by particular crops or modes of management, may always be made by the farmer or bailiff from recollection. There can never be a field on the farm, which he cannot at the time of reaping the crop, tell how often it has been ploughed; when manured, what the seed was worth, &c.; and from these and the other usual data, he can easily make out & Dr. and Cr. account, sufficient for all practical purposes.

SECT. II. Management of Servants.

4522. In order that servants may be able and willing to do their work, it is necessary that they be well fed, comfortably lodged, and decently clothed. The last requisite may be

left to their own judgment, allowing an adequate sum or wages for that purpose: but the feeding and clothing of farm servants, and especially of single 'men, requires to be seen to by the master. Without this attention on the part of the latter, the sum allowed for these purposes will either be in part hoarded up, or idly spent, in either case lessening the physical strength, and often injuring the moral faculties of the man.

4523. In former times, the servants lived at the same table with their masters, and that is still the practice in those districts where the farms are small. On moderate-sized, and on large farms, they are usually sent to a separate table; but of late a custom has been introduced of putting them on board-wages. This is a most pernicious practice; which often leads them to the ale-house, corrupts their morals, and injures their health. It is a better plan, with a view of lessening trouble, to board them with the bailiff; but it is still more desirable for the farmer, to have them under his own eye, that he may attend to their moral conduct. He will find much more useful assistance, from the decent and the orderly, than from the idle and the profligate.

4524. The best mode of managing yearly married servants, whether ploughmen or laborers, we conceive to be that already referred to (4496.) as practised in Northumberland, and other northern counties. Marshal (Review of Bailey's Northumberland) calls it a remain of feudal times; but certainly, if it is so, it appears one of those remains which should be carefully preserved. We may challenge the empire to produce servants and farm operations equal to those where this system is adopted. The great excellence of the system consists on its being founded in the comfort of the servant.

4525. The permanent laborers on a farm ought to be treated in the same manner as the ploughmen; and indeed it is much to be wished, for the sake both of humanity and morality, that all married laborers, who live in the country, should have gardens attached to their cottages, if not a cow kept, and a pig, and fowls, in the manner of the Scottish ploughmen. Some valuable observations on this subject will be found in The Husbandry of Scotland, and The Code of Agriculture.

4526. Temporary laborers, or such as are engaged for hay-making, reaping, turniphoeing, &c. are for the most part beyond the control of the farmer as to their living and lodging. It is a good practice, however, where hay-making and reaping is performed by the day, to feed the operators, and to lodge such of them as have not homes in the neighborhood, on the premises; providing them with a dry loft, and warm blankets. Piece or job-work, however, is now becoming so very general, in all farm operations performed by occasional laborers, that attention to these particulars becomes unnecessary, and the farmer's chief business is to see that the work be properly done.

4527. A day's work of a country laborer is ten hours during the spring, summer, and autumn quarters. Farmers, however, are not at all uniform in their hours of working during these periods. Some begin at five o'clock, rest three hours at mid-day, during the more violent heat of the sun, and fill up their day's work, by beginning again at one o'clock, and ending at six in the evening. Others begin at six, and end at six, allowing half an hour at breakfast, and an hour at dinner. But although these be the ordinary hours, both for servants and laborers, during the more busy seasons of the year, yet neither of them will scruple to work either sooner or later, when occasion requires, In regard to the winter months, the hours of labor are from the dawn of morning, as long as it is light, with the allowance of about half an hour at mid-day for dinner.

4528. That the rate of labor must in a great measure depend upon the price of grain, is a general principle. In England, the value of a peck of wheat, and in Scotland, of a peck of oatmeal, (being the principal articles of subsistence of the lower orders of the people in the two countries,) were long accounted an equivalent to the daily pay of a laborer. In both countries, however, the price of potatoes has, of late years, had a considerable influence in the rate of labor; and in England, the effects of the poor laws have tended to keep down that rate below the increased price of provisions, and thus have deranged the natural progress of things. It has been ascertained, that a man, his wife, and from two to three children, if wheat is their habitual food, will require ten gallons weekly. When they live on bread, hard working people ought to have the best kind, as that will furnish the most nutrition. How then could a laborer and his family exist, upon wages of from 6s. to 9s. per week, when wheat is from 88. to 10s, or 12s. pér bushel? The difference is compensated by the poor-rates, a most exceptionable mode of making up the deficiency; for labor would otherwise have found its own level, and the laborer would have obtained the price of a bushel and a half of wheat weekly.

4529. In Scotland, the rate of labor has increased beyond the price of provisions. Prior to 1792, the average price of a peck of oatmeal was 1s. 1d, and the average price of a day's labor in summer, 1s. 1d. which nearly corresponded with the principle above stated: but the average price of a peck of oatmeal, in 1810, was 1s. 32d. whilst the average price of a day's labor was 1s. 104d which shews, in a most satisfactory manner, the very great improvement that has taken place, in the lot of the laboring classes, in that part of the united kingdom. (Gen. Rep. vol. iii. p. 262.)

4530. The practice of giving laborers grain, &c. at a cheap rate, was adopted by George III. who carried on farming operations to a considerable extent, allowing his laborers flour at a fixed price, whatever wheat might sell for. This benevolent system

has been practised by several gentlemen farmers, some of whom have allowed bread, and others a daily quantity of milk, at moderate prices. The same system is general in several of the western counties, as in Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall, where the laborers have a standing supply of bread-corn; of wheat at 6s. and of barley at Ss. per bushel.

4531. In the wages of labor, as well as in every thing else, moderation is desirable. It is remarked, that high wages have a tendency to throw laborers out of employment, as farmers in general, and even small proprietors, are unable to give such wages; hence they are obliged to carry on their work with fewer hands, or to postpone improvements, which otherwise they would have undertaken. Nor is that all. The laborers themselves suffer by it, and so does the public. In the fens of Lincolnshire, wages have risen in harvest time, from 3s. 6d. to 7s. nay to 10s. 6d. per day, every day's hiring taking place at a certain spot, where masters, whose work is in haste, outbid each other, and thus raise the wages to that exorbitant height. The consequence was, that the laborers got drunk, would not work above four days out of the six, dissipated their money, hurt their constitutions, contracted indolent and vicious habits, and their labor was lost to the community, for at least one-third part of the time, at a most important crisis. (Code, &c.)

4532. Most descriptions of country labor, performed without the aid of horses, may be let by the job. Farey, in his excellent Report of Derbyshire, informs us, that besides all ordinary labor, the late John Billingsley, of Ashwick Grove, in Somersetshire, let his ploughing, harrowing, rolling, sowing, turning of corn when cut, hay-making, &c. by the acre, and from which he found great advantages, even where his own oxen and horses were used, by the takers of the work. Whether we regard dispatch, economy, perfection of rural works, or the bettering of the condition of the laborers therein, nothing will contribute so much to all these, as a general system of letting works at fair and truly apportioned prices, according to the degree of labor and skill required, in each kind of work. Few persons have doubted that dispatch and economy are attainable by this method, but those who have indolently or improperly gone about the letting of their labor, have uniformly complained of its being slovenly done, and of the proneness of the men to cheat, when so employed. These last are to be expected in all modes of employment, and can only be counteracted, or made to disappear, by competent knowledge and due vigilance in the employer, or his agents and foremen, who ought to study and understand the time and degree of exertion and skill, as well as the best methods, in all their minutiae of performing all the various works they have to let. At first sight, these might seem to be very difficult and unattainable qualifications in farmers' bailiffs, or foremen, but it is nevertheless certain, that a proper system and perseverance will soon overcome these difficulties. One of the first requisites is, the keeping of accurate and methodical day-accounts of all men employed; and, on the measuring up and calculating of every job of work, to register how much has been earned per day, and never to attempt abatement of the amount, should this even greatly exceed the ordinary day's pay of the country; but let this experience gained, operate in fixing the price of the next job of the same work, in order to lessen the earnings by degrees, of fully competent and industrious men, to 1 to 24 times the ordinary wages when working by the day.

4533. Select the men into small gangs, according to their abilities and industry, and always set the best gang about any new kind of work, or one whose prices want regulating, and encourage these by liberal prices at first, and gradually lower them, and by degrees introduce the other gangs to work with or near to them at the same kind of work. On the discovery of any material slight of, or deceptions in the work, at the time of measuring it, more than their proportionate values should be deducted for them, and a separate job made to one of the best gangs of men, for completing or altering it: by which means shame is made to operate, with loss of earnings, in favor of greater skill, attention, and honesty in future. When the necessity occurs of employing even the best men by the day, let the periods be as short as possible, and the prices considerably below job earnings, and contrive, by the offer of a desirable job to follow, to make it their interest and wish to dispatch the work that is necessary to be done by the day, in order to get again to piece-work. The men being thus induced to study and contrive the readiest and best methods of performing every part of their labor, and of expending their time, the work will unquestionably be better done than by the thoughtless drones who usually work by the day. And that these are the true methods of bettering the condition of the laborers, Malthus has ably shewn in theory, and all those who have adopted and persevered in them, have seen the same in practice. (Farcy's Derbyshire, vol. iii. 192)

SECT. III. Of the Arrangement of Farm Labor.

4534. The importance of order and system we have already insisted on ($127.), and the subject can hardly be too often repeated. To conduct an extensive farm well, is not a matter of trivial moment, or to the management of which every one is competent. Much may be effected by capital, skill, and industry; but even these will not always