The Scottish-English Divide

It has been noted that the lives of Scottish labourers were quite different than those of their English counterparts, and in northern England and Scotland, labourers were involved in "stock-rearing, fattening and cropping", wherein labourers were involved in "weeding, dunging, singling and intensive ploughing." Scottish labourers were generally hired long-term and boarded on the farm, and the average day for a Scottish labourer was ten hours long with a two-hour rest. As at Craigflower, it appears that most Scottish labourers generally were paid at least partially in kind rather than in money, and this system did not seriously decline in Scotland until the late nineteenth century. Due to the fact that a number of Scottish farms were often located far from villages, it was impractical to pay labourers solely in cash. [note]