What would it mean to you to be turned off your job and lose half a years pay? That statement is not comparing like with like but is a bit more realistic than invoking romance, which in any case is a luxury of the middle class. These hired workers were poor people, living on or below the breadline. I've recently read "The Dillen" by Angela Hewins. That gives a view of what the English labouring poor went through in the late 19th early 20th century. Their lives were easily as bad as the Irish poor.