women work by the piece, they strive to earn higher wages, say $1,25 a week in summer, $1,00 to $1,10 in winter. These are the regular wages with cider.
In some of the Dorsetshire villages, the younger females are much engaged in button-sewing, and as it is a lighter employment, are not tempted to field work, unless during summer, and then only at twenty to twenty-four cents a day.
Women accustomed to field labor, represent it as good for their health and spirits; this, however, must be taken with some restrictions; for where women poorly clad are exposed to cold and wet, and this for ten or twelve hours a day when the weather will permit, catarrhs and rheumatism will be the result.
From this cause we find them complaining, as their husbands too often do, of stiffness and pains at the joints, long before such complaints can be the result of old age, or natural infirmity.
Regarding the moral condition of the females in these counties, the evidence is very conflicting. Here we find a clergyman inveighing against field labor, as the source of most of the immorality in the district; another, an old fashioned farmer, declaring quite the contrary; a third, less biased than either, admitting that field labor is not the best school for morals; a fourth, a grave old man, says, "those young ones would never stick to their work were it not for the cider I find them, and the fun they make for themselves."
There are three modes in which the employment of children may take place within these counties: they may be taken to assist their parents, may be hired by the day or week as women are, or may be apprenticed by the parish. The servitude, in the case of agricultural apprenticeships, extends from the age of ten to twenty-one for boys, and generally till marriage for females. The
