BOOKS.
THE FARM LABOURER.*
IN the form of a folio Blue Book, which is of all printed matter the most awkward to read, the Board of Agriculture has pub- lished a very remarkable Report by Mr. Geoffrey Drage on the state of the agricultural industry last year, with special refer- ence to wages and conditions of labour. It is based on the reports of special investigators who, under Mr. Drage's direction, travelled up and down England and Wales in the first half of 1918 and made exhaustive inquiries which are recorded in a second Blue Book. As Mr. Drage is one of the ablest of our trained economists, though his admirable public work has received no special recognition, we are in no way surprised to find that his Report throws a new light on this highly important but very complex subject. He has done single-handed, and, as Sir Henry Rew says, gratuitously, the work that was last done more than twenty years ago by two Royal Commissions ; and we are inclined to think that he has done it better because he was concerned merely with the facts and had no political colleagues to confuse him. His Report opens with a brief survey of English farming, showing its extreme diversity and the effect of modern changes, with some curious information about minor industries and rural handicrafts. He then dis- cusses at length the supply and quality of agricultural labour, the conditions of employment, and the wages paid. Next he examines the vexed question of cottages, and he concludes with most interesting section on the relations between farmers and labourers, the new growth of rural Trade Unionism, and allotments and small.holdings. He deals separately with Wales. Mr. Drage lays stress on the wide differences in practice between the farmers in different counties, and between those farmers in the same county who are engaged in different forms of agriculture. It is dangerously misleading to generalize about English farming when the conditions, as the Report shows in detail, vary so widely. Yet it is safe at least to say that every- where the farm labourer's wages have been greatly improved, partly as a result of the war, and that the farmer's main concern is to know whether the nation's future fiscal policy will allow him to pay the high wages and yet make a moderate profit out of arabie farming. Mr. Drage examines the assertion that English labourers are "not as good as they used to be." After pointing out that the farmers of a quarter of a century ago made precisely the same complaint about the young labourers of that day as the present farmers do about those young labourers' eons, he shows statistically that "the land and stock managing capacity of each man has considerably increased since 1871." One man-unit was employed in that year for every 20-9 acres of cultivated land and every 3•3 cattle, 16 sheep, and 1-8 pigs brty years later one man-unit was employed for every 271 acres and every 6 cattle, 191 sheep, and 21 pigs. The farmers had, of course, introduced much machinery to achieve such a result, but the labourers had learned to work the machinery. There is no reason, then, to lament the lost efficiency of the farm labourer. At the same time it is true that until recently many of the beat young countrymen were drifting away from the land into the more highly paid occupations of miner, railwayman, policeman, and so forth.
In dealing with wages Mr. Drage examines in detail the ques- tion of allowances. He points out that the labourer's allow- ances in Lincolnshire in 1917 were equal in value to an eighth of his yearly income, and that the wagoner's allowances were equal in value to a third. The allowances are permanent, and are unaffected by the labourer's temporary absence from work ; therefore their real value to the labourer is greater than their bare money value, and an increase of wages equivalent to that money value ia substitution for the allowances might leave the labourer worse off than before. One of the allowances most commonly made is that of a cottage free or at a nominal rent. The maximum rent was fixed at three shillings a week for the purposes of the Agricultural Wages Boards. Now, as Mr. Drage points out, no new cottage can be built and let at such a rent without loss, and therefore none will be built except by a wealthy landowner who does not seek profit from his estate or by the State through the Local Authori- ties. It is unfair, he says, to blame ordinary landowners for not • Wanes and Conditions of -Employment in Agriculture. Vol. I., General Report by Mr. Geoffrey Drage, Director of Investigations. ((m& 24.) Vol. IL, Iteporto of the Investigators. (Cool: 2$.) London : Stationery Office for the Mown Of
Aviculture. 91. edam' 45. mt.)
building, as they could not afford to do so even before the war, Various causes have combined to produce a scarcity of cottages— the condemnation of houses that did not come up to the modern standard of sanitation, the refusal of labourers' wives to live in cottages remote from the high road, the competition of miners railwaymen, postmen, and local officials for labourers' cottages, for which they paid twice or thrice as much rent as the labourers had done. But Mr. Drage urges that it would be less to the public interest to subsidize labourers' cottages than to see that the labourer earned enough to pay an economic rent This is most desirable, but high wages for the labourer mean at any rate a steady market for farm produce. The prevision of cottages for farm workers varies in the different parts of England. It is not so deficient, apparently, as many people think. But the insanitary cottages are far too numerous, and, Mr. Drage believes, will not be repaired or replaced until medical officers of health are made independent of the Local Authorities and are enabled to speak their minds freely. Mr. Drage commends the " cob " cottages of Cornwall and Devon, and mentions that the Devon Education Committee is forming classes for " cob " building. He suggests that the difficulty of providing cottages might be eased if some cheap building material were employed. There is certainly no need to limit the choice to brick or stone.) Thera is PisS de Terre, of which our mien will hear more before long.
Mr. Drage gives an interesting account of the new Labourers' Unions, which appear in many districts to be as well disposed towards the farmers as the farmers are to them, except in Lancashire. The farmers have taken steps to organize them- selves with a view to joint action on the part of farmers and labourers in defence of the agricultural industry. As the interests of the farmer and the labourer are to a large extent identical, this is a wise policy. Moreover, the two classes have equal representation on the Wages Boards and are learning to work together. We may note by way of contrast that in Gla- morgan and Monmouth, where a little knot of revolutionary agitators has preached a class war among the miners, the farm labourers also have been corrupted to some extent under the belief that their employers have made excessive profits. But outside this unhappy district the relations between farmers and labourers—except, as we have said, in Lancashire—seemed last year to be friendly enough. Mr. Drage is not among the ardent advocates of small-holdings, which would of course tend to draw farmer and labourer closer together by creating an inter- mediate class of promoted labourers who might become farmers in their turn. He does not think that a farm of less than forty or fifty acres can be made to pay, unless it is worked as a market garden or a dairy farm, or unless the small-holder is a man of exceptional talent and industry. He refers to a "famous seventy-acre field of good loam on clay" near Tring, which grew "magnificent crops until it was divided up into small-holdings. The land then deteriorated, and all the small-holders abandoned the enterprise except the originator, who would apparently have liked to follow their example. Yet Mr. Drage is firmly convinced, on grounds of public policy, that fresh efforts must be nmee to encourage small-holders, especially ex-sailors and ex-soldiers, and that small farms too must be preferred to the large farms which may yield larger profits and produce better corn crops. He sees the difficulties more clearly than the optimists do, but he concurs heartily in the belief that the more people we can settle comfortably on the land, the better it will be for the nation. On the whole, his instructive Report leaves us with a hopeful flab*. Provided that the nation treats the agricultural industry fairly, the outlook is more cheering than it has been for many years. We congratulate Mr. Drage heartily on this very able survey.
Previous page
