Income risk and the English farm labourer, c.1750-1850

"This paper explores three aspects of the income risks to which English farm labourers were exposed during the period 1750 to 1850. First, the farmer’s labour demand could fluctuate quite dramatically from year to year in unpredictable fashion. This is illustrated by the sizeable changes in the annual timing and duration of the grain harvest on a given farm. In 1792, the Reverend John Howlett claimed that the difference between the farmer’s total payments to labourers in economical and expensive years was at least 25 per cent. The (albeit imperfect) evidence from more than half a dozen farm account books suggests that his estimate was about right, at least on those farms located in areas that tended to specialise in arable husbandry. Second, the duration of the labourer’s formal employment contract seems to have fallen over time, which is suggestive of greater job insecurity. The decline of farm service, where annual agreements were standard, is well known, but there is little data on the contracts of day labourers since the majority of these bargains were made verbally. It is proposed that a crude proxy for contract length is provided by the periods of time recorded in farm account books for which labourers were paid (for example, ‘William Atkinson 2 days work’). A pilot study of the evidence indicates that the mean payment period declined over time, and also (as expected) that the mean payment period for female day labourers was typically shorter than that for men. Furthermore, that more than 20 per cent of all entries incorporated a half-day element suggests that employment for only half a day was not uncommon. Third, many agricultural labourers were at risk of not being paid if bad weather forced outdoor work to be abandoned. The practice of lack of payment for ‘wet time’ appears to have been well established by the late eighteenth century. Those most vulnerable were day labourers working on a farm’s arable operations, especially pieceworkers and members of a gang in the eastern counties. There is little evidence that this risk was shared by farmers paying their workers half wages on wet days, and it is difficult to argue that labourers were paid a compensating wage differential. Contemporary estimates indicate that farm labourers not employed wet or dry would lose about one or two week’s wages per annum on average because of poor weather, although the cost must have been higher in some years than others. "