CONCLUSION 353 



farmers have been extravagant in the employment of labour because 

 it was ostensibly cheap — but, in truth, through their over-employ- 

 ment of it, with only a scanty return expected, really very dear. 

 You may waste as much in shillings as you may in pounds. What 

 a number of needless boys, trudging unnecessarily by the side of 

 teams and ploughs and carts, could we do without ; and how much 

 labour is wasted in so carelessly ordering employment, that there is 

 needless going backwards and forwards, and little jobs are taken up 

 and put down again regardless of the waste of time. In our industry, 

 thanks to good organisation, the use of labour-saving machinery, 

 and also to the full use of our wits — when we realised that we were 

 still on the upward path — we managed to retain our supremacy in 

 the manufacture of cheap goods of recognised quality for decades 

 against other nations having a very much larger command of 

 labour at ridiculously low wages — wages at which (like ours in 

 agriculture up to the very recent past) labour was allowed to run to 

 waste just because it seemed to be cheap. It was only when 

 foreigners in their turn began to organise employment so as to 

 reduce cost per task that they became dangerous competitors. 



We shall have to try to do the same as we did in industry now in 

 agriculture. Not a little would be gained in this respect, if we could 

 only bring ourselves to make labour the cordial ally of employment 

 by identifying the two interests by some such method as profit- 

 sharing, and eventually co-partnership, be it in its inception ever 

 so elementary, so as to make the two forces of head and hand pull 

 the same way, instead of pitting their strength one against the other. 

 And there is room enough and to spare for collective organisation, 

 not only in buying and selling — which is at present being encouraged 

 in not quite the right way, if it is to last — but in other matters as 

 well, but undoubtedly in buying and selling first. We have up to 

 now almost totally neglected it, though we were the first to experi- 

 ment with it in a timid way some sixty years ago. And even now 

 when we endeavour to take it up, thanks to Whitehall Place 

 guidance, we make a point of raising artificial obstacles in our 

 own path. 



Under this aspect the utterly uncalled for estranging and challeng- 

 ing provocation of the working men's co-operation is bound to 

 present itself as doubly unwise, not to say foolish. In the first 

 place, our agriculturists desiring to co-operate stand in need of 

 tuition in the practice of co-operation. Since the Agricultural 

 Organisation Society was started in 1900, we have had a vari.t v 

 of suggestions of practical co-operation in agriculture put forward. 



R.R. 



A A 



