ABSTRACT
Harvest time meant all the family could earn and it was this family earning power, bolstered by piece work and harvest contracting, that made the vital difference. Time and the need of the farmer for labour made higher piece-work earnings available, and harvest contracting was for once a favourable bargaining area for the worker. In the southern counties a growing rural population was set against a massive increase in arable production, making employment opportunities scarcer in winter with a greater demand for labour created in the harvest months. Even those fortunate enough to find regular winter work could not command much more than a subsistence wage in the slack seasonal periods and in Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire men were hired annually at Old Michaelmas a slack time for labour. Disbursements made by farmers during the winter, compared with the summer months, recorded in contemporary account and labour books demonstrate how central to the agricultural worker’s economic life harvest earnings.
