280 RURAL RECONSTRUCTION 



remuneration." Under that aspect profit-sharing appears to me 

 the appropriate " method " to adopt, as marked out by present 

 conditions. We have relieved our conscience by establishing what 

 appears a " good " wage for rural workers. However, we have not 

 yet by a long way heard the last of " wages " as a question of 

 dispute and possible strife. Farmers — even such as allow that the 

 labourer is worthy of his present hire — nevertheless complain about 

 the heavy toll which the new rate levies upon them. Their business 

 will not, so they affirm, admit of it. That complaint is not to be 

 taken as an immutable judgment. However, for the time, the irrita- 

 tion is there. And the suffering patient will naturally seek relief 

 somewhere. The wages once raised, cannot be reduced. That is out 

 of the question. The relief desired, therefore, will have to be sought 

 in the intensification of the labour rendered in return, by making 

 it more productive and by such means more valuable. To such 

 end profit-sharing, which secures a direct interest to the worker, 

 enlisting his intelligence, judgment and sense of responsibility, 

 seems the most promising means. 



But there is also another side to the question. We already see 

 agricultural labourers combining to unions, as industrial labourers 

 have been combining for some decades past. The movement is 

 still in its infancy. The coming Gargantua is still only a babe. 

 No embittered or enduring animosities have yet been aroused. No 

 distrust has been established. What turbulent Trade Unionism, 

 fully developed, persuading itself of its irresistible power, may lead 

 to we know from painful experience. Are we indifferent to the 

 possibility of the same condition developing in agriculture ? Are 

 we to lay ourselves out for a similar development of strife, with 

 all its horrors, all its hardships and privations for the unoffending 

 public, all its inroads upon the desired production, in the realms of 

 agriculture ? Will it not be better to " agree with our (potential) 

 adversary quickly, while we are in the way with him " ? In their 

 bargainings and disputes with employers industrial workmen are 

 still in the stage in which, as a nation, we were in our dealings with 

 France in the days, not to say of King Henry V., yet certainly of 

 Queen Anne and her General Marlborough, when armies clashed upon 

 one another, and each side sought victory in the destruction or else 

 the total subjection of the other. In agriculture, at any rate, had 

 we not rather follow the very much better and more fruitful example 

 of our late King Edward, who, supported by his minister, Lord 

 Lansdowne, brought our differences, as between the two countries, 

 to a far more satisfactory end by a peaceful entente, which has 



