ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an attempt to obtain, and to set out information, obtained during the autumn of 1903, as to the condition of the population of a Bedfordshire village, which lies in the centre of one of the largest purely agricultural districts in England. Almost all the village people are, therefore, employed directly or indirectly in agricultural pursuits. Ridgmount, the village in question, lies from one to two miles from the station of the same name on the Bletchley and Cambridge branch of the London and North-Western Railway. In a country village the occurrence of an excess of employment for the labour at hand, or an excess of labour for the work to do, is largely a matter of season. The village is bounded on one side by the Wobum Park of the Duke of Bedford, who is the greatest landowner, house-owner, and employer of labour in the district.
