AGRICULTURAL PRICES AND WAGES [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
am sorry to have given offence by a letter which ap-
peared in your columns more than two months ago, to the correspondent who calls himself " Oliver Rustic," in yOttr
issue of March 13th, but I maintain, and shall continue to do so, that if the author of England's Green and Pleasant Land has not the courage to give his name, his criticisms'of rural condi- tions are scarcely worth considering. If the author asserts that publicity would lay him open to victimization, my answer is that in these days it is Only trade unions which can success- fully victimize the truth-teller—the Owners and occupiers of English land, even if they would; being entirely unable to do so.
As for the general condition of the farm workers, I submit that this, as a rule, is as good as it can be, considering the awful slump in agricultural prices from which our industry is suffering to-day. No industry pays, or ever can pay, wages otherwise than out of gross profits, and with the prices of wheat, barley, beef, mutton and wool all in the depths of de- pression the wonder really is that present wages can be paid. I am not blind to the fact that the farin worker often does very much more for his wages than his brother on the railWay sheltered industry in the kingdom and the most exposed to , or in some other sheltered job, but agriculture is the most un-
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competition from all the countries of the world, some of them revelling in the cheap production rendered possible through the use of .sweated labour. Next week I shall be planting, potatoes, but I do not know= and nobody can tell me—whether the crop when lifted in October will be worth £4 a ton or £8. Such uncertainty does not prevail in any other business to anything like the same extent. The extraordinary fickleness of our weather, and the utter uncertainty of agricultural prices in this country, owing to overseas competition, taken together, do indeed make British 'farming the. most trying and anxious business in the whole world, while the Wages Act—full though it is of good intentions—has largely been our difficulties. The fact that rents have only heen .raised by 20 per cent.—or less during . the last twelve years, , notwithstanding the great increase in commodity' prices, and the, small profits, if any, made in farming by various Co-operative Societies throughout England, prove at any rate that if " Hodge is in the ditch" he has not been put there either by the landlord or the farmer.--;
Scarcroft, near Leeds, March 15!h.
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