Note 245 — Chapter IV · AGRICULTURAL TRIBES.

The difference between farmers and agricultural labourers now first came into existence. The latter most often held a small patch of land, but this was not sufficient to live upon; they depended on wages. Besides agricultural labourers there were male and female servants for household labour. The regulation of wages by law, which occurred especially after the ravages of the great plague, proves that in the southern and western parts of Germany free labour had become general. Such servile work as still remained was often done by labourers hired by the peasant to whose duty the work fell, just as in the case of the English peasant who “found” a man245.