[
292 ] Notes on Sources
which, by keeping him to its confines, retains him always at their command when
wanted for urgent work." They declare that "high wages
and free labourers would
overwhelm them" (Pringle). Stolidly they opposed all proposals to invest the poor
with allotments which would make them independent. Plots which would save
them from destitution and keep them in decency and self-respect would also
make them independent and remove them from the ranks of the reserve army
needed by the agricultural industry.
Majendie, an advocate of allotments recom-
mended plots of a quarter acre, anything above that he thought hopeless, since
"the occupiers are afraid of making labourers independent."
Power, another
friend of allotments, confirmed this. "The farmers object very generally, he said,
to the introduction of the allotments. They are jealous of such deductions from
their holdings; they have to go farther for their manure; and they object to the in-
creased independence of their labourers."
Okeden proposed allotments of one-
sixteenth of an acre, for, he said, "this would almost exactly use up as much spare
time as the wheel and the distaff, the shuttle and the knitting needles" used up
when they were in full activity in every industrial cottage family!
This leaves but scant room for doubt about the true function of the allowance
system from the point of view of the farming community, which was to ensure an
agricultural reserve of resident poor available at any time. Incidentally, Speen-
hamland in this way created the semblance of a rural surplus population, where in
reality there was none.
4. The allowance system in the industrial towns.
Speenhamland was primarily designed as a measure of alleviation of rural dis-
tress. This did not mean restriction to villages since market towns, too, belonged
to the countryside. By the early 1830s in the typical Speenhamland area most
towns had introduced the allowance system proper. The county of Hereford, for
instance, which was classed from the point of view of surplus population as
"good," showed six out of six towns owning up to Speenhamland methods (four
"definitely," four "probably"), while the "bad" Sussex showed out of twelve re-
porting towns three without and nine with Speenhamland methods, in the strict
sense of the term.
The position in the industrial towns of the North and Northwest was of course,
very different. Up to 1834 the number of dependent poor was considerably smaller
in the industrial towns than in the countryside, where even before 1795 the near-
ness of manufactures tended to increase the number of paupers greatly. In 1789 the
Rev. John Howlett was arguing convincingly against "the popular error that the
proportion of poor in large cities and populous manufacturing towns is higher
than in mere parishes, whereas the fact is just the contrary"
{Annals of Agriculture,
v, XI, p. 6,1789).
What the position in the new industrial towns was, is unfortunately not ex-
actly known. The Poor Law Commissioners appeared disturbed about the alleg-
edly imminent danger of the spreading of Speenhamland methods to the manu-