THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER.
[TO THE EDITOR OF THE "SPECTATOR."] Sin,—" A Radical Squire " thinks it a strange notion of mine that the labourers' friends are simply asking that certain allow- ances in kind which they now receive shall be commuted for a money payment of 3s. a week.
The " Radical Squire " misunderstands what I said. In the first place, I said that I took 3s. a week only for the convenience and clearness of naming a fixed sum, assumed to be somewhere about the average increase now and lately in question.
In the next place, I assumed—I was speaking throughout hypo- thetically—that the 3s. would raise the wages to the fall money value, as if it was an auction, which the labour would fetch. And I say that if that is to be the system—apart from the particular sum— the labourer will get that value, and nothing else. The "Radical Squire" says that the labourers are not asking for this, but something different, among other things, for a good house There seems to me a confusion of ideas here. Of course the labourer, like every one else, wants a good house, just as he wants good food, good clothes, good everything. All I say is, that on the supposed system, he will have to pay the full value of all those things out of his money wages. If be does, all those things will come in time, as in every other case of a natural demand.—I am, Sir, &c., Ilagley, Stourbridge, September 16, 1872. LYTTELTON.
Previous page
