TOPICS OF THE DAY.
THE WARWICKSHIRE STRIKE. • THE Agricultural Strike is far from over, is rather spreading to more counties, Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire especially, but the conditions of the struggle are becoming much more distinct as a vast quantity of irrelevant matter which had been imported into the discussion gradually disappears. In the first place, the Labourers have framed their Union rules and formulated their terms, and it is seen at once that their demands, whether reasonable or otherwise, are at all events neither misty nor impossible. There is no " agrarian" element in them what- ever, no attack on Property, nothing inconsistent with the English notions of managing ordinary business. They ask for no land, no tenure, no exemption from dismissal, only for some more pay. The men ask, first of all, that their Unions shall be tolerated, which is merely their right as free men ; then that their cottages should be let to them on six months' leases, or less than the ordinary term in towns ; then that the normal rate of wage should be 16s. a week, and the normal day eleven hours; and then that the Farmer when settling disputed points should deal with all the hands on his farm, a provision essential to prevent a defeat in detail. In return they promise never to make a new demand without a month's fair notice, and to leave the whole subject of harvest labour, the vital point for the farmer, open to agreement. We are not ourselves entirely content with these terms. As we read the over-condensed reports before us, they do not give the labourer quite security enough against eviction, which he will want, if he is to be paid in part in land, or against dismissal in winter ; and they do not give the farmer quite security enough against the attack he is most afraid of, a combined refusal to work just before the harvest is ripe. He may, we think, in the interest of the commonwealth, fairly ask for that security, and the Unions ought to grant it, on the obvious principle that a strike at that moment is equivalent not to a mere refusal to work, but to a deliberate destruction of property useful to the public as well as to the owner, and purchased by instalments from them by their employer. The labourers sell the farmer his harvest, and must keep their promise. Sooner than lose the har- vest of all England, it would be just for the State to resort to a conscription of reapers, and we do not see much difference between firing a crop and leaving it to rot. To do so is to break the agreement underlying the whole transaction, and is distinctly a moral wrong. At all events, as the Unions have not the slightest wish to endanger the harvest—the labourers in their instinctive and rightful fidelity to the land looking on that with quite as much aversion as their employers—they would be wise to remove that unwritten dread out of the path of negotiation. There is nothing, however, in these terms either unfair or visionary, they are merely demands for wages, such as any trade in the country might make, and if the trade were like any other, the only point left for discussion would be the amount.
The farmers begin to see this, and their advocates are gradually narrowing the discussion down to that. Of course there has been a great amount, though less than usual, of the old nonsense about the "privileges" and " perquisites " and " kindnesses " which go to alleviate wages, and are declared to swell the average from 120., the usual silver wage, up to 15s. a week, but the very men who repeat it are getting tired of argument so utterly beside the point. They see just as well as we do, though some of the farmers may not, that " privileges " cannot be put into the stocking-heel, that the labourer wants the power of saving cash and not that of getting beer ; that the "kindnesses" are disguised alms, and like all alms, degrade the receiver ; and that whatever their value, it is for both parties to the contract to decide whether they shall be part of the contract or not. The labourers are tired of being "protected," and want to be paid instead ; weary of privileges, and anxious for contract-rights ; sick to death of "kindnesses," and asking for a little justice. They may, as far as our argument is concerned, be entirely unwise in their choice. The feudal system may be alto- gether better than the contract system. The present social arrangement may be worth more to the com- monwealth than a minute amount of additional com- fort to a class. The point is not that, but this ; that the labourers being free men decide for payment in silver against payment in kind, and have a clear right so to do. Their advo- cates, as we have said, see that, and produce on their behalf the common-sense argument that the trade is too profitless to. bear the change. The farmers, they say, cannot give so muck without losing the interest on their money, without which they cannot work. Mr. John Algernon Clarke, for example, ad- vances ordinary business statistics, showing that on a rich far= of 480 acres the increase demanded would amount to an addi- tion of £400 to the annual outlay on wages, and as the far- mer's profit is now officially estimated by the Exchequer at only £510—more than ten per cent. on his capital, which ought to be £10 an acre, or £4,800, and therefore in many districts more than the truth—he will have only £110 for himself, which is clearly too little to tempt him to go on. He could earn more as bailiff to a landlord, and retain the interest on his capital beside. There is common sense in. that argument, indeed, as compared with some of the rubbish talked by men who ought to know better—as, for instance, by one gentleman who talks of the "low principle of supply and demand, and would, we suppose, call the tides vulgar—uncommon sense, but Mr. Clarke makes the mistake of considering it too final. It is quite true that if a trade connot pay the wages asked for, the wages must either be given up, or the trade must stop, or the con- ditions of the trade must be altered, but the third is one of the alternatives. What prevents an alteration in the condi- tions of the trade ? Mr. Clarke himself says that on the farm he is describing the rent reaches the very high sum of £1,020, or more than the whole annual outlay in wages, and suppose the extra wage comes out of that. We neither think that it will, nor wish that it should, though landlords are driving their monopoly somewhat hard ; but clearly such a result would neither throw land out of cultivation, nor do the. State any harm whatever, the money being still in existence, and only spent by the cottagers instead of the owners. It is nothing to the State who spends it,—except, indeed, that the landlord may waste it, and the labourer may use it fructuously. If the matter is pushed to this extremity the landlord, who is only one, mast suffer before the labourer, who is ten ; but in England the social war is never fought out. to the bitter end, and there are a dozen compromises remaining to be tried. We have suggested one, with the approval, as we know, of several experienced landlords,. namely, payment in land as well as silver, and there are at least two others immediately available. One—and the one, which we see far off, but coming on apace—is a. tenant-right strong enough to tempt larger capital on to the land. Men who manure with gold can pay high wages and get a profit too, but then they must not be treated as Mr.. Hope, of Fenton Barns, has just been treated by Mr. Nisbet. Hamilton, being turned out of an occupancy of a hundred. years because he, an agriculturist of European standing, was. unacceptable to his landlord. Capital dreads caprice. Another course is to let the land in patches direct to the labourers, and trust to the terrible industry and thrift that form of tenure evokes, industry and thrift so great that the drawback to the system is the absorption in those useful but somewhat earthy qualities of all the higher qualities of the man. A fourth course, and best of all, is co-operation, the admission by the farmer of the labourer to half-profits over the interest on his capital. Not one of these plans will, we are quite aware, be tried yet—all parties to the struggle being conservative—but they must all. be tried and all fail before the opponents of the labourers can honestly say that the alternatives are the existing wages or a cessation of cultivation. In practice, of course, the dispute will proceed in the regular English way,—as a long struggle, in which the labourers will gain a shilling now and a shilling then till they reach the ordinary level of handicraftsmen, and this order of tenants and that order of farmers will succumb to the pressure, and give place to men who, either because of their capital, or of their energy, or of their compromises with the landlords, are able to endure the new conditions. But. behind and beyond that process are radical alterations of system, one of which, a change in tenure, we believe to be inevitable ; and all must be risked or tried before it is assumed. that the mass of the English agricultural population is to work for wages which do not allow of saving, to eat insufficient food, and to be sustained in old age by alms.
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