He said, it was very
difficult to determine how to agree with a thresher. 'If you pay him by
the day's wages, he will thresh no more than he pleases; though to be
sure, the negligence of a thresher is more easily detected than that of
most labourers, because he must always make a sound while he works. If
you pay him by the piece, by the quantity of grain which he produces, he
will thresh only while the grain comes freely, and, though he leaves a
good deal in the ear, it is not worth while to thresh the straw over
again; nor can you fix him to do it sufficiently, because it is so
difficult to prove how much less a man threshes than he ought to do.
Here then is a dilemma: but, for my part, I would engage him by the day:
I would rather trust his idleness than his fraud.' He said, a roof
thatched with Lincolnshire reeds would last seventy years, as he was
informed when in that county; and that he told this in London to a great
thatcher, who said, he believed it might be true. Such are the pains
that Dr. Johnson takes to get the best information on every
subject[714].
He proceeded:--'It is difficult for a farmer in England to find
day-labourers, because the lowest manufacturers can always get more than
a day-labourer. It is of no consequence how high the wages of
manufacturers are; but it would be of very bad consequence to raise the
wages of those who procure the immediate necessaries of life, for that
would raise the price of provisions.
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