WAGES. _AND: CONTENTMENT [To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
Sra,—I've just come home from attending the second annual meeting of the Life Subscribers to the Spectator with the Chairman of the Company and the. Editor .of the paper and his chief assistants, I will only say it was a pleasant and an interesting meeting and I hope it is only the first of many I. shall attend.
I was asked to write and, if I _understood rightly, enlarge upon something I said at this meeting. So I obey.
I was brought up on a farm and became familiar with the 'dyes and ideas of the workers on farms in that part of the country. Many years later, I visited the same farm—or rather farms—and have also visited other farms.. I have also worked in factory, machine shop and so on.
There were, comparatively speaking, content and happiness
■ among the farm workers sixty years ago. Certainly judging by their intimate talk among each other and by every other test, there. was the happiness which contentment, and con- tentment alonecan bring among the mass of the farm workers. Now there-is a bitter feeling among them that makes happi- ness comparatively a thing of their fathers' time.
This is not to say that the changes of sixty years of striving for and-by this class has or has not been advantageous to it, but it is to say emphatically that increased happiness cannot be reckoned among the results.
The farm worker. wears cloth where his father or grand- rather wore a smock-froek, eats white bread where. sixty years ago bread made with a mixture, of seconds flour was,,eaten. This last bread was cheaper to buy and went farther, .so that so.much was not required. Cloth is more expensive in wear than a smock-frock, and these instances are typical. In other words he lives on a higher scale .as far as expense goes and he has more leisure, He is wealthier and ;so of the similar class in other callings in general and of no calling.—I am, Sir, &c., Taos. S. WICRSTEED.
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