178 



THE AGRICULTURAL NEWS. 



June 11, 1910. 



every successive application of capital to cultivation 

 must be less profitable than the first. If this was 

 actually true, the logical course arising from it would 

 be quickly to cease to employ capital for the working 

 of a given area of cultivated land, after the first few 

 crops had been taken from it, so that agriculture would 

 soon consist chiefly in the exploitation of new land. 



Practical experience and scientific experiment have 

 demonstrated the fact that the limits of the ability of 

 ihe soil to produce are definitely set by the supply of 

 light, heat, air and water that is available for it, and 

 for the plants growing in it. Agricultural research 

 shows it to be increasingly probable that, until those 

 limits are reached, the growth of the knowledge gained 

 in the laboratory and ihe experiment plot, and the 

 advance in the skill with which the land is worked, will 

 tend, by themselves, to bring the cost of production on 

 so-called worn-out soils down to the level of that on soils 

 of greater fertility. Thus the time may be reached when 

 the gains will be the same, whether the labour is being 

 employed for inferior soils or for those which are 

 superior, and the return from the capital used will be 

 as great, near the ultimate point at which it can be 

 invested usefully, as it is when it consists virtually of 

 labour alone, applied to newly cultivated soils. 



These considerations have reduced the question of 

 the best use of the soil to one of labour, and the problem 

 for the agriculturist will be to find the way in which 

 he can employ most profitably, both from his own point 

 of view and that of the labourer, the sources that are 

 at his disposal. This problem will include the task of 

 discovering the means by which he may be enabled to 

 have a constant supply of efficient labour at his com- 

 mand; it will be readily understood that by ' labour' is 

 not meant field labour, alone, but all the means for the 

 provision of such human energy as is not employed 

 solely in a directive and administrative capacity. 



The question of the supply of labour is not, how- 

 ever, merely one of the future, as the outcome of the 

 conditions that have just been described. It is a matter 

 of the present, in many regions of the world, including 

 parts of the West Indies. It is evident that one of the 

 chief causes that may operate in the production of 

 a shortage of labourers, is the creation of conditions, 

 in another country, such that high wages are 

 offered, in order to attract the worker, with the 

 result that he yields to the temptation to make 

 a test of the apparently better conditions in the new 

 country. He cannot be expected to realize that the 

 receipt of higher wages does not necessarily bring 



about an increase in comfort and material prosperity, 

 and he does not recognize, while still in his native coun- 

 try, the value of the many ameliorating circumstances 

 that enter into his daily life there, the sharing of which 

 is not dependent on the possession of money. In mak- 

 ing these statements, the value of emigration to a place 

 where wages are higher, which arises from the oppor- 

 tunity to remit sums of money to those who are left 

 behind, is not ignored. It is evident, however, that 

 such emigration has a limit of usefulness in this direc- 

 tion, and that its interference with the provision of an 

 adequate labour-supply may result in making conditions 

 less favourable in the country which the emigrant has 

 left. 



In considering what steps should be taken in order 

 that a constant supply of adequate labour may be 

 ensured, where there are signs that this might become 

 no longer available, assistance will he gained from 

 a proper realization of the olivious fact that the labourer 

 works solely in order that he may provide himself, and 

 those who are dependent on him, with the means to 

 live, together with as many luxuries as he can com- 

 mand. As time passes, the evidence of any sentiment 

 of attachment to a particular employer or place is quickly 

 becoming smaller. These conditions make it natural 

 that the supply of labour should move in those directions 

 where it appears that the greatest prices will be paid 

 for it. This is no longer a local condition, for as has been 

 considered already, it leads to emigration, and that the 

 more easily, as means of transport are increased and made 

 cheaper. The fact of practical value immediately sug- 

 gested by this is that, if this unsteadiness of labour- 

 supply is to be remedied, it must be made worth the 

 labourer's while to remain where he is being employed; 

 an appeal must be made to him through the provision 

 of additions to his welfare; he must be convinced by 

 a material argument which he is able to appreciate. 



The way in which this argument may be provided 

 is a matter for trial, and the application of the sugges- 

 tions arising after experience. It will vary in different 

 places, and will require modification as conditions change 

 with time. Efforts toward its discovery are being made 

 already; one of these, namely the scheme of giving 

 bonuses for permanent labourers, adopted at the 

 Antigua Sugar Factory, was described shortly in the 

 last number of the Agrirulfural Neivs, and it is of 

 interest that this has proved itself worthy of extension. 

 Such endeavours should result in adding the value 

 of permanency to that of the presence of labour and, 

 as regards the labourer, should enhance the sense of the 

 value of his continuous work and of his self-respect. 



