244 ENGLISH AGRICULTURAL LABOURER. 



stated that " some farmers were enticing labourers from 

 their neighbours by offering them a higher wage. He thought 

 farmers would have been too gentlemanly to do that." 1 

 Certainly, farmers have generally shown a nice, gentlemanly 

 feeling in this matter. 



At a large conference of Yorkshire agriculturists at York, 

 Mr. Furness had the temerity to say that, " they would 

 have to give men less hours or something. He had come 

 to the conclusion that if they could allow the men off at 

 one o'clock Saturday until Monday morning there would 

 be no scarcity of labourers." 2 



Early in 1915 another difficulty arose. Landowners and 

 agents were urging farmers not to employ men of military 

 age. Now it was estimated that up to July, 1915, 243,000 

 agricultural labourers volunteered for the Army and Navy, 

 and eventually, according to the Wages Board Gazette, 

 September 15, 1919, no less than 400,000 left the land 

 for the Services. Apart altogether from the insult con- 

 tained in this circular, it was a foolish policy to enlist all 

 men of military age, as the nation soon discovered, when it 

 needed the services of the skilled agricultural labourer on 

 the land more urgently than it needed him in the ranks. 

 Besides, at this time there were thousands of men working 

 at parasitical luxury trades. 



The War Office now began to offer the help of soldier- 

 labourers to the farmers, but the War Office quite rightly 

 insisted that these men should be properly paid. This 

 insistence on an adequate wage was resented by many far- 

 mers, and at a meeting of Malton Agricultural Club, in 

 discussing the schedule of rates from 43. a day for the hay 

 harvest to 55. a day for the corn harvest, Mr. F. Dee, with 

 a curious sense of patriotism, declared he 



" would rather let his crops rot than accept those terms, and he 

 moved a resolution, which was carried, that unless the pay was 

 the same as for ordinary agricultural labourers, soldier labour 

 must be declined." 



Mr. Dee did not stand alone. Personally, I knew one 



1 Manchester Guardian, April 16, 1915. 

 * Yorkshire Herald, April 3, 1915. 



