Labour Relations in Scottish Agriculture before 1870
Houston, George
Agricultural History Review, Volume 6 part 1 (1958)
Abstract
An outstanding feature of Scottish economic development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was the rapid growth of capitalist farming and the emergence of a large agricultural working class all over the lowlands. By the middle of the nineteenth century there were about 200,000 wage-earners working on the land, two-thirds of them on the 1o,ooo farms with the largest staffs. The main characteristics of their conditions of employment are fairly well known. The great majority were hired for periods of six months or one year, new engagements often being arranged at feeing markets held regularly in many country districts. All types and grades of farm workers received a large part or in some cases the whole of their wages in kind. Unmarried servants generally boarded in the farmhouse or lived in an outhouse (or ‘bothy’), while married servants lived in cottages on the farm. Conditions of employment varied over the country and many local customs were very long in dying out, but gradually a more homogeneous class of agricultural wage-earners was built up, and today minimum wages and conditions are enforced throughout the country.
A comprehensive history of this important section of the Scottish working class remains to be written. ~ The present article deals with only one aspect of such a history; it is a study of institutional factors which influenced relations between farm workers and employers and helped to determine working conditions in Scottish agriculture.
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