AGRICULTURE AND THE GOVERNMENT.
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—The Agricultural Wages Bill now before Parliament is a measure which may have the most serious consequences, for it is an attempt to apply the principle of State control-- without any counter-balancing scheme of State assistance —to an industry which is suffering severely from low prices due to vast importations from abroad, from a long and costly winter and a disastrous spring, and from the intricate and sometimes contradictory regulations by which it is hoped to stamp out foot-and-mouth disease. Whatever good intentions may be behind the Bill, it could not have been brought forward at a time better calculated to cause injury and exasperation.
Mr. Buxton tells us that there are two million industrial workers whose wages are controlled by Trade Boards or Committees, and argues that farm workers have as much right to be State-aided as their brethren in the towns. The fallacy of this argument is, of course, obvious, if we consider that a farm cannot be closed down during a slump like a factory or a shop—to shut up an amble farm from now to Michaelmas, that is for three or four months, would mean not only the loss of any crop this year, but a special expendi- ture afterwards of some £10 an acre to get the land back to its present state. Land is the fixed plant rented by the tenant from the landlord, and if the farmer fails to keep it in good repair it deteriorates almost as rapidly as would the looms and machines in a cotton mill if the roof were taken off and they were exposed to the weather. The growth of weeds after a wet spring and the checking of the corn with which they compete is a matter infinitely more serious than the townsman can readily conceive.
Further, if Wages Boards have, in particular cases, done some„good, their general effect has been distinctly harmful,
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and Government e intro] of wages has helped enormously to promote unemployment by forcing up the cost of production to such a • degree that the consumer refuses altogether to buy or contents himself with some cheap foreign substitute. Another serious result of the political enhancement of wages is that the lowest paid and least skilled workers always benefit most. Thus we are told that in the ship-building trade to-day wages are higher than before the War by 96 per cent. for the unskilled man (the labourer), by 63 per cent. for the half skilled man, and by 36 per cent. for the skilled man. To some extent this is true of the engineering trade generally, with the result that the skilled men are going to America, and that, notwithstanding the amount of unem- ployment, it is difficult to get good turners and fitters in this country—that is, we are deliberately teaching people that skill is not worth while.
This, however, is an aside—the points which I wish to enforce are that : (1) Any undue raising of wages which would lead to reductions of staff might have most disastrous consequences for agriculture ; and (2) that we farmers cannot get our own back out of the consumer, or even attempt to do so, since the prices for nearly all kind of agricultural produce are decided by foreign competition.
What, Sir, the agricultural worker needs to-day is not higher wages—which the industry will not stand—but better purchasing power for the wages which he is already receiving, and if he will agree to pay cash, which is the only system whereby the wage-earners can ever get full value for their money, there is no reason why he should not be benefited to the extent of 15 or 20 per cent., if agricultural employers will agree to do their best to supply him with cheaper food. The single men and the married men without families have not much to complain of, but the cost of living is a serious matter for the man with five or six children.
To this end I suggest that the National Farmers' Union, the Central Land Owners' Association and the Land Union should undertake that, during the next eighteen months, all agricultural workers in the employment of their members should be able to buy for cash a quartern loaf at the price of the lowest wage rate per hour paid in any district—at present 6d.—a lb. of bacon at Is. and a stone of potatoes at 1s. Of course it might happen that they would be able to buy their bacon at 10d. per lb. and their potatoes at 9d. per stone, which would be so much the better for them, but I submit that inasmuch as prices are more likely to rise than to fall, some such scheme as this might prove of very great benefit to those most in need of consideration—the men with large families —while the withholding of Government interference for eighteen months or, say, till October 1st, 1925, should give us time to formulate practical schemes of co-operation for which we should require more assistance in the way of loans than the Government seems prepared to afford.
As an owner of land and an occupier of it to the extent of 3,000 acres, and as one who has tried the bread subsidy for more than a year and a-half to the great satisfaction of the men and at a cost of about is. 8d. per family per week to myself, I earnestly beg that this suggestion may receive P.S.—Perhaps I may add that I am strongly in favour of Co-operation, quite as much because it would benefit the labourer as because it would help the farmer. In this con- nexion I suggest that for every thousand pounds found by farmers and landowners for Co-operative purposes the State should lend an equal amount at 41 per cent. for interest and 2/ per cent. towards a sinking fund, and on the understanding that the farm worker should receive the full benefit of member- ship by taking up a £1 share.
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