THE AGRICULTURAL LABOURER AND THE INSURANCE SCHE ME. [To THE EDITOR
OF THE "SPECTATOR"]
cordially agree with Mr. Buchanan's letter in your last issue. I am a country doctor, and I know, from personal experience, what a hard lot is the life of the agricultural labourer and his wife in time of sickness. How can a man, earning from fifteen to twenty shillings a week, save enough to pay for the confinements and sicknesses in his family ? I have discussed the matter with the country clergy, and the problem is a terrible one. If the labourer is in full work, he can't and won't claim Poor Law relief ; and, although he is generally in a club himself, his wife and children are not, so that in family sickness he has to rely upon the charity of doctor, parson, landlord, and neighbours. Until the Insurance Bill includes his wife and children, the agricultural labourer who is in a good club (and, in my experience, it is the elderly men who are in clubs and not the young ones, who seem to expect the State to look after them) will not be any better off than he is at present. A man in town, on a similar wage, can put himself and his family in a private doctor's club at a cost of one penny per week per head ; but no doctor can afford to take the wives and children of country patients for night and day work seven days a week at that fee. I sincerely sympathize with the " straight " agricultural labourer who tries to pay his way and hold his head up; and I hope, with Mr. Buchanan, that he may get one penny off his premium. But I again sympathize with the doetor who also tries to do the " straight " thing, and I hope he may get a bit added to his pay. When I was young and healthy I did not send bills to these unfortunates until I found myself over- whelmed with them, so that I bad little time left to make a living out of those people who could pay. Having lately had a severe illness myself, and experienced the "incubus of debt" so graphically de- scribed by Mr. Buchanan, I now make it a rule to send bills to all and sundry, not with any idea of being paid, but in the fervent hope that these unfortunate clients may find a younger man to carry on the burden. I write this letter more in sorrow than in anger that the public don't seem to realize that the doctor, in order to try to help his patient to live, must also live himself.—I am, Sir, &c.
" COUNTRY LEECH."
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