working life of women seventeenth century - School of Economics ...

64 AGRICULTUREtime was well spent in spinning for the family.The flax or hemp grown on the allotment, wasstored up for shirts and house-linen. If the husbandmanhad no sheep, the children gathered scraps ofwool from the brambles on the common, and thusthe only money cost of the stuff worn by thehusbandman's househ~ld was the price paid to theweaver.The more prosperous the family, the less the motherwent outside to work, but this did not mean, as undermodern conditions, that her share in the productivelife of the country was less. Her productive energyremained as great, but was directed into channelsfrom which her family gained the whole profit. Inher humble way she fed and clothed them, like thewise woman described by Solomon.The more she was obliged to work for wages, thepoorer was her family.C. Wage-earners.In some respects it is less difficult to visualise thelives of women in the wage-earning class than in theclass of farmers and husbandmen. The narrownessof their circumstances and the fact that their destitutionbrought them continually under the noticeof the magistrates at Quarter Sessions have preserveddata in greater completeness from which to reconstructthe picture. Had this information been wantingsuch a reconstruction would have demanded no vividimagination, because the results of the semistarvationof mothers and small children are verysimilar whether it takes place in the seventeenth orthe twentieth century ; the circumstances of thewives of casual labourers and men who are out of workand " unemployable " in modern England maybe taken as representing those of almost the wholewage-earning class in the seventeenth century.The most important factors governing the lives ofwage-earning women admit of no dispute. FirstAGRICULTUREamong these was their income, for wage-earners havealready been defined as the class of persons dependingwholly upon wages for the support of theirfamilies.Throughout the greater part of the seventeenthcentury the rate of wages was not left to be adjustedby the laws of supply and demand, but was regulatedfor each locality by the magistrates at Quarter Sessions.Assessments fixing the maximum rates were publishedannually and were supposed to vary according to theprice of corn. Certainly they did vary from districtto district according to the price of corn in thatdistrict, but they were not often changed from year toyear.Prosecutions of persons for offering and receivingwages in excess of the maximum rates frequentlyoccurred in the North Riding of Yorkshire, but it isextremely rare to find a presentment for this in otherQuarter Sessions. The Assessments were generallyaccepted as publishing a rate that public opinionconsidered fair towards master and man, and outsideYorkshire steps were seldom taken to prevent mastersfrom paying more to valued serl-ants. That upon thewhole the Assessments represent the rate ordinarilypaid can be shown by a comparison with entries incontemporary account-books.The Assessments deal largely with the wages ofunmarried farm servants and with special wages forthe seasons of harvest, intended for the occasionallabour of husbandmen, but in addition there aregenerally rates quoted by the day for the commonlabourer in the summer and winter months. Evenwhen meat and drink is supplied, the day-rates forthese common labourers are higher than the wagespaid to servants living in the house and are evidentlyintended for married men with families.In one Assessment different rates are expresslygiven for the married and unmarried who are doing65