3-070-537 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Dinner Time: Waiting for the Reapers, 1881. 'The reapers of this year's English harvest, we were all sorry to know, have been waiting too long for sunshine. On the late fine days, such as we are now glad they have at last got this week, let them go on with their work. It will not do to keep them waiting for their dinner at noon, in the brief half-hour of needful repose. Here is a good young woman, the wife or daughter of someone, punctually "waiting for the reapers," with their welcome mid-day meal. They have well earned it, no doubt, by their morning's diligent toil in the corn-field. If such as they refused to work, none of us, in town or country, would get anything to eat...The purely agricultural labouring population, in most parts of England, has notably decreased, whether by emigration to America and the colonies, or by the children finding employment in towns...With reference to diet, there is too much cause to fear that the rural labouring classes, the producers of so much of our food, are not so well fed as most working-class people in town'. From "Illustrated London News", 1881.