Footsteps in the Furrow. Andrew Arbuckle
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Although feeing markets were long past, I recall in the 1960s my father still paying this bargain cash, or arles, to a new employee. His handing over of a £5 note may have been well beyond the Is fee money of the 1930s, but the deal was just as effectively sealed.
For many farm servants, going to the feeing market without knowing whether they could get a ‘fee’ must have been unnerving. It is no coincidence that the local paper always reported army recruiting agents attending the Cupar Fair to snap up men willing to take the Queen’s shilling rather than go home empty-handed.
To try and avoid any imbalance between the supply and demand for farm workers, in 1926 the Fife Agricultural Society set up an employment register for farmers and workers. While it got off to a good start, this was not an unqualified or long-term success. In 1934, only 17 farmers registered and 67 ‘servants’ – as they were called in those days, where the year-long contract defined the worker as ‘servant’. Fees that year were £70–£75 per annum for grieves, with foremen getting up to £70 and others, as the NFUS minutes record, being paid £60–£65.
Once the fee was taken, it was understood to be effective for the year. In 1941, a court case was heard in Cupar over an employee who had deserted the farm to which he was fee-d. A neighbouring farmer accused of ‘harbouring’ this individual stated in evidence that the house that the man was offered was uninhabitable. The Sheriff dealing with the case decided the employee had broken his contract, but as no money had changed hands, there was no case to answer.
The last feeing market in North-East Fife was held in Cupar in 1939. During the war years, there was a Standstill Order in place preventing farm workers from moving from farm to farm unless there was mutual agreement. Such a move also required the sanction of the War Agricultural Executive. These restrictions were eased in 1950 so that farm workers could take up employment outside the industry.
Perks
These days, almost everyone has perks, or more fully perquisites, with their jobs. If you are a city banker or chief executive of a major company, then it seems likely that you will be given a few million pounds’ worth of share options. In my previous employment, with a major newspaper publisher, staff would be offered discounts on the firm’s annual publications, such as The Dandy and The Broons. Few, though, will realise that farm workers had a far more comprehensive gathering of perks than almost any other set of employees. In fact, in the early 1920s farmers reckoned that the wage packet of farm workers could be doubled if the full value of their perks was included.
John Stewart Struthers estimated the average wage of a worker was £65 per annum, but with perks this package rose to £116. He compared the reward with the pay of a carter, which at that time was only 34/- (£1.70) per week.
Potatoes, oatmeal, milk, pigs, poultry and coal all featured in the list of items that farm workers would receive as part of their remuneration and that is without mentioning the free house, or as it has been more commonly known, the tied house. Potatoes were the staple diet and in addition to those grown in the cottage gardens, workers would be allowed up to 1 ton per annum for their families.
Today, giving a family 1 ton of potatoes each year would end up with a large percentage unused, but that was a typical agreement between farmer and worker on taking the fee. In some cases, the potato perk was measured in drills, leaving the worker and his family to lift the potatoes as part of the deal. One contract at the turn of the last century specified 1,600 yards, or 1,500 metres, of potato drill.
Oatmeal was always part of the deal and a number of working millers delivered around the farms. This basic ingredient of porridge and many other meals was essential, and the general amount was round about 5 stones of oatmeal, or 30 kilos per month.
Milk would also be provided and again there was a generous quantity with 4 pints, or 1.7 litres per family per day being a common figure. Where farms did not have their own milking cows, the local milkman supplied the milk and the farmer paid the bill.
On many farms, workers were allowed to keep 2 pigs per year. The common practice was one at a time so that there was pig meat to eat throughout the year. Pigs in their own crays (or sties) at the end of the cottage gardens were fattened through food waste from the cottage, or food from the farm.
The killing was done on the farm and the local butcher would take part of the carcase as his fee. Often the pig was shared out with cottage neighbours in an informal scheme that would see the move reciprocated when the next pig was slaughtered. After the killing, the pig was immersed in a tub of boiling water, when its hair was taken off with blunt knives. It was not skinned, but hung up and gutted. The hams were then cured by immersion in brine and hung from a hook in the living room. Many such hooks survive to this day and examples of this practice are still carried out on the Continent.
Sometimes, instead of keeping pigs, the farmer would agree to his worker having up to a dozen hens. Again the perk, this time in eggs and even occasionally as chicken meat, helped supply the family table.
On some farms, where wood was scarce for fires and boilers, and these were the only sources of heat, often there was an agreement to supply so many bags or even tons of coal during the year for the worker. There was no electricity in the cottages, but paraffin for the Tilley lamps was also a regular perk of working on a farm.
In addition to these standard perks, others crept in during times of hardship. In the East Neuk of Fife, with its fishing villages, many farmers would buy a barrel of salt herring, which they left in the stable during winter. Workers could help themselves to this source of food, if they wished. In 1918, the farm books at Drumrack Farm show the purchase of a barrel of salt herring for 30/- (£1.50).
Although it was not universal practice, some lairds were also noted for their generosity at Christmas time, giving out gifts that included coals for heat and rabbits for food.
Possibly the most contentious perk of all was the tied house. Back in the early years of the last century it was a fairly common practice to have houses for employees. Many coal mine and factory owners built houses next to the workplace to ensure an on-hand workforce. On farms, the position was similar in that transport was such that living anywhere other than on the farm was not feasible. Cottages were part of the deal with the landlord on tenanted farms, along with the farm steadings and the farmhouse.
The tied house strings have now been loosened with the reduction in the tenanted sector and with increased mobility of the workforce. Very few of the rows of farm cottages in the countryside now house farm workers. Most tractor drivers and others now working on farms own their house or rent them from housing associations.
Working hours and unions
For children, Christmas morning can be a wondrous experience. I was no exception, scrambling down to the bottom of my bed to see what Santa had brought. Outside, I could hear the sound of the cattle as they were being fed and the tractors as they moved about the yard. Right up until the mid-1950s Christmas Day was a normal working day on the farm.
New Year’s Day was different and always had been so. Even when they had few other days off, this was one of the accepted holidays for farm workers.
For the first four decades of the century, the normal working week was 6 full days, with only the Sunday off. Even then, there was an expectation that horsemen would tend to their beasts on the Sabbath.
Just after World War I, the local branch of the NFU argued against men having a half-day off on a Saturday. One member fulminated this was the equivalent of giving them another 26 days’ holiday in the year. When added to the 3 statutory holidays to which they were entitled, then they would be off work for 29 days each year.
Note the 3 – yes, just 3 – statutory days off These were New Year’s Day, feeing market day and Fife Show day. Other than those, the only break from full-time work was Sunday. A year or two later, an application was made to the Fife District Council by the recently formed Scottish Farm Servants Union (SFSU) for a sports day and gala on the first Saturday in July. This was to be held in Thornton,