WHAT OF THE HARVEST? 255 



to accept. He said that if he did, the Corn Production 

 Act would soon become a Grass Production Act. I wonder 

 if Mr. Prothero (now Lord Ernie) ever considers what a 

 false prophet he was to his own child, for the lowest mini- 

 mum fixed under the Agricultural Wages Board was 305. 

 and the acreage of grassland which came under the plough 

 showed an increase in 1917-18 over 1916 of 1,806,601 acres. 



The hard logic of events two years later produced the 

 most destructive criticism of the economic theory that agri- 

 cultural wages have been dependent upon prices. When 

 the Act was passed, instituting a minimum wage of 253., 

 farmers were obtaining 785. 7d. per quarter for their 

 wheat, 1 hours were not then denned, and cattlemen were 

 working overtime without extra payment. 2 



On October 6, 1919, when a new Order came into force 

 fixing an increase in wages of 6s. 6d. a week, the price of 

 wheat was 55. 6d. a quarter less (it was 735. id.), and many 

 men in charge of horses and cows who worked about the 

 same number of hours as in 1917 earned on an average 505. 

 a week, that is, exactly double wages. 



Under the Act " permits " were allowed to employ a man 

 at less than the minimum who was " affected by any mental 

 or other infirmity or physical injury which renders him 

 incapable of earning that minimum rate." This provision 

 rendered innocuous the cry that a legal minimum wage 

 would deprive old men of their livelihood. 



The able-bodied men were to have wages fixed by the 

 Agricultural Wages Board high enough to "promote 

 efficiency and to enable a man in an ordinary case to 

 maintain himself and his family in accordance with 

 such standard of comfort as may be reasonable in rela- 

 tion to the nature of his occupation." All those, of either 

 sex came under the Act, who worked on farms, nursery 

 and market gardens, in woods, orchards, or osier land. 



When the benefits or advantages received by the labourer 



1 Vide Average Prices of British Corn, Journal of the Board of A griculture. 



2 " At Christmas, 1917, was a period, lasting three or four weeks, when 

 little fortunes in some instances were made ... in the fat stock market. 

 Instances are known where as much as 50 profit per beast was made." 

 . . . Minutes of Evidence Royal Commission on Agriculture, 1919. Vol. 

 II. Appendix No. V. 



