25 



APPENDIX No. V. 



PAPERS SUBMITTED BY MK. F. L. WALLACE 

 IN CONNECTION WITH HIS EVIDENCE, SKD 

 SEPTEMBER, 1919. 



SIR. 



Tillypronie, 

 Tarland, 



Aberdeenshire. 

 23rd August, 1919. 



I have the honour to submit for the consideration 

 of the Royal Commission a suggested basis for corre- 

 lating the wages to be received by the agricultural 

 workman with the price which the farmer receives for 

 his produce in such a manner as not to affect the 

 farm workman's standard of living. 



I have the honour to give the suggestion in the 

 form of an excerpt from my Report on Wages and 

 Conditions of Employment in Agriculture in the 

 County of Northamptonshire, already published in a 

 Blue Book under that heading. 



I have the honour to be, Sir, 

 Your obedient Servant. 



(Signed) F. L. WALLACE. 



Tin- Chairman, 



Royal Commission on Agriculture. 



EXCKRPT from Mr. F. L. WALLACE'S Report upon 

 Wages and Conditions of Employment in Agricul- 

 ture in Northamptonshire, March, 1918. 



Finally I would venture to suggest, for the con- 

 sideration of the Agricultural Wages Board, the 

 desirability of correlating the minimum wage of the 

 future to the cost to the farm servant of certain 

 alimentary commodities, and thereby correlate the 

 wage to the selling price of farm produce. In an 

 earlier section of this report, dealing with " the 

 AttHude of the Farmer " towards the wages question, 

 the writer drew attention to the danger which lies 

 in fixing wages by Act of Parliament at a compara- 

 tively high level, owing to the uncertainty which lies 

 in the future of profits upon farming the land. From 

 the returns which the Board are now receiving in 

 regard to agricultural workers' budgets, it should not 

 be impossible to compute the quantities of the alimen- 

 tary necessaries of life required by an agricultural 

 working man and his family to live well. The sugges- 

 . tion is that the minimum wage should be made to 

 rise or fall automatically correlatively to the prices 

 of food stuffs, and thus, instead of the farmer being 

 saddled with the payment of a certain wage to his 

 men, whether the price he received for his produce 

 enabled him to pay such a wage or not, as the price 

 the farmer would receive for his produce would 

 diminish, so, in approximate ratio, would the amount 

 of wage diminish which he would have to pay to his 

 men. Similarly, if th cost of food such as meat, 

 flour and sugar rose, the wages would have to rise 

 proportionately. 



. It would be necessary to this scheme that a portion 

 only of the minimum wage as fixed by Act of Parlia- 

 ment should be ear-marked as covering the cost of 

 alimentary necessaries of life, and only that portion 

 of the wage would thus be liable to fluctuation. The 

 remainder of the wage would thus be left unaffected 

 directly by a rise or fall in the prices received by the 

 farmer for the produce of his farm. 



Supposing, for the sake of example, it were found 

 that 40 per cent, of the wage is required by the 

 labourer to purchase bread, milk, meat in other 

 words, farm produce then it is suggested that this 

 40 per cent, of the wage should be governed by a 

 sliding scale according to the prices which the farmer 

 mi- liis produce. The tithes rent charge might 

 be taken as a basis. The remaining 60 per cent, of 

 tin- wage should not be altered. If the price of 

 foodstuffs fell it is probable that the prices of other 

 things would fall somewhat, and in that case the 

 jinn-basing power of the 60 per cent, would be in- 

 creased. Under this arrangement if the farmer got 



less for his produce he would have to pay less wage 

 to the labourer, but the labourer's standard of living 

 would not be lowered thereby. 



The prices of tea, sugar, and other imported 

 articles .should not affect the wage to be paid, as, if 

 the prices of these articles fell, the farmer would 

 himself get the benefit equally with other people. 



SIR, 



Having received a request from the Director of 

 Investigations that I should present an ad interim 

 Report upon the results of my recent investigations 

 to date into farming costs, I have now the honour to 

 present to you the attached (id interim Report, 

 together with a Statement of Analysis in Tabular 

 Form (Statement A). 



I have the honour to be, 

 Sir. 



Your obedient servant, 



F. L. WALLACE. 



Investigator to the Agricultural Wages' Board. 



2Wi Octoler, 1918. 

 SIR -HENRY REVV, K.C.B. 



AD INTERIM REPORT UPON FARMING COSTS. 



In the Notes which I have presented to you from 

 time to time, I have indicated a drift of mind towards 

 certain conclusions. In my present Notes and in the 

 Tabular Statement I have endeavoured to bring into 

 prominence certain outstanding features based upon 

 the upwards of 70 statements of account, balance 

 sheets, and details of costs which I have already had 

 the honour to present for your consideration from 

 time to time, and which have been collected during 

 the past few months in the Counties of Northampton, 

 Oxford, Buckingham, Cumberland, Westmoreland, 

 Northumberland, Durham, and the North Riding of 

 'Yorkshire. 



It has been my endeavour to put before you, with 

 two or three intentional exceptions, only statements 

 of information collected from farmers who have been 

 most carefully selected as being, in the general esti- 

 mation of their neighbours and of the farming com- 

 munity generally, leading farmers whose ability and 

 science place them in a prominent position of respect, 

 and whose success or otherwise may be taken to be a 

 fair criterion of the capabilities of farms and of farm- 

 ing of a similar character in the neighbourhood. At 

 the same time, it has been the endeavour to include 

 under review all classes and scales of farming in so 

 far as time has been available for research up to the 

 present. 



It is to be presumed that Government cannot base 

 a policy upon the results of poor farming, but only on 

 the results of farming where the utmost has been pro- 

 duced by the means at the disposal of the farmer ; the 

 samples have been selected, therefore, from farms 

 accordingly ; and it should be borne in mind that the 

 average English farmer would probably not be ablo 

 to show such good results as those shown in the typical 

 cases given. 



While the farming community have been freely con- 

 sulted in regard to the sources of information which 

 should be tapped, and which could be regarded as 

 representative, it is important to note that no farmer 

 can be aware of which of his neighbours has supplied 

 the statements of accounts presented for your inspec- 

 tion, unless the informant has made it known himself ; 

 for it is, and has been, and will be, a matter of honour 

 ith your investigator strictly to preserve the anony- 

 mity of each of the gentlemen who have so kindly, 

 willingly, and patriotically given all the information 

 at their disposal to help this inquiry. Similarly, every 

 precaution is 'taken to disguise the locality of the 

 informants' farms. 



It is greatly to be regretted that some of the infor- 

 mation collected, although of extreme interest to the 

 inquiry, does not lend itself readily to statistical 

 treatment, and, therefore, the tabular statement is 

 hardly commensurate to the total of information 

 collected. 



