ters in domestic economy are allowed to fall into disorder, so much so, that some women say it is more to their advantage to stay in and attend to affairs at home. It is, however, to the general condition of the agricultural laborer in these counties that we are to look for the main evils that are said to affect his case. His wages vary from two to three dollars per week. This is inadequate when he has a large family to support; and the consequence is, want of sufficient clothing, neglect of personal cleanliness, and scantiness of diet. At the farm houses, where the single men live with their masters, of course the fare is better; it is by the married cottagers that the greatest evils are felt.
Their cottages are small and in bad order; they are generally damp and in a state of decay; there is no inducement to cleanliness or neatness on the part of the laborer, and hence what ought to be homes, are mere hovels for shelter. Cottages generally have two apartments; a great many have only one. The consequence is, that it is very often extremely difficult, if not impossible, to divide a family so that grown up persons of different sexes do not sleep in the same room. Three or four persons not unfrequently sleep in the same bed, and in a few instances I have heard of families who have arranged it so, that the females of both families slept altogether in one cottage, and the males in the other. Generally an old shawl is suspended as a curtain between two beds in one room.
