1 APRIL 1938, Page 17

Lost Men

It is good news that 3o,000 farm-workers in three counties— Sussex, Durham and Devon—are to receive higher wages. following the decision of the Agricultural Wages Board. Yet, as one newspaper pertinently points out, they will still be worse paid (far worse paid) than the man who sweeps the garbage off your streets. There is an old and very stupid reply to the grievance that farm labourers are atrociously underpaid. It is that farm workers get supplements in the form of free cottages, free milk, free firewood and, of course, free air. It may be that all or some of these things are true in all or some of thousands of cases. If the 'average children of the average English farm labourer are anything to judge by I very much doubt it. But even if it were true (and milk is still thrown to pigs and fire- wood lies corded and rotting on many estates), it would still not justify a wage of thirty-four shillings to a man who is too often expected to understand animals, land, crops, scythes, grass, weather, men and machines. On this basis the land will shortly have a problem not only of lost soil but lost men.

* * * *