MINUTES OF EVIDENCE. 



19 



j August, 1919.] 



Sn; DANIEL HALL, K.O.B., F.B.S. 



[Continued, 



367. I understand the policy of the Committee is 

 to provide a minimum living wage. A flat rate of 

 wage over an arbitrary area, say a county, which 

 is quite arbitrary, is'sottled by the Agricultural 

 Wages Board. This area of county must include 

 good, bad, and indifferent land. Taking my county, 

 take the land known to you in Littleport Fen or 

 Ramsay, or round Bigglcswade. That land, being 

 very productive, would pay the mini num wage with 

 ease; but, taking the stretch of land, say, from 

 Bishops Stortford running away to Newmarket, 

 which is light thin land, it is doubtful whether that 

 class of farm will pay the minimum wage. The 

 difficulty is that we have the flat rate quite irrespec- 

 tive of the units of productivity of the various farms. 

 I want to ask you to tell us if there is any way you 

 can suggest in which that difficulty can bo got over. 

 It is the flat rate extending over the whole of the 

 area which seems to produce the difficulty? But 

 before there was any minimum wage regulation, did 

 you find that in these rich lands higher rates of wages 

 prevailed over the poor lands? 



368. Certainly, the rates of wages in the good lands 

 were always far better than on the bad? Was that 

 the case, taking things widely in England? 



369. I do not know; I am speaking locally? 1 

 should never have been able to trace, in my own 

 experience, any connection between the rate of wages 

 and productivity of the land : sometimes rather the 

 contrary. 



370. Not between tbe rate of wages and productivity 

 of the land ? No ; I never saw any connection. 



371. I think I could give you several instances; 

 but is there any way you can suggest? I think what 

 one can say is that there must be a flat minimum 

 rate of wages. You have no right to ask 

 a man to come and live on the poor land 

 and farm in a certain way, because you say: "I 

 can only farm it this way by cutting your wages 

 down." That is what the State says the farmer must 

 not ask. It says: "We will come to the farmer's 

 help, rather. There is a certain rate of wage which 

 ought to be paid ; and if not, the style of farming 

 must be changed." 



372. That is the answer or the land go out of 

 cultivation ? Yes. 



373. Mr. Eobbinx : I understood you to say that 

 you thought, or you held, that the State interest 

 required that we should get as much land under the 

 plough as possible, for reasons of national safety and 

 reasons of providing employment ; that, even if war 

 were impossible, it would still be in the interests of 

 the State to foster arable cultivation, and it is 

 desirable to get back, if possible, to the 1872 arable 

 area? Yes. 



374. That, I take it, is the view of the Department? 



Yes. 



.'!"">. Could you give us any indication as to how 

 far the Department have succeeded in persuading the 

 Government that that is a sound view? As far as 

 the present Government goes, I should say that it 

 committed itself in the Corn Production Act to the 

 principle of assisting agriculture ; and all the 

 assurances one has at the present time are that this 

 current Government is still committed to that point 

 (if view, and only want the necessary policy defined 

 and put before them, when they will do their best 

 to carry it out. Every declaration I have heard from 

 the Government and from the Prime Minister is 

 that they stand on the position that the prosperity 

 of agriculture is vital to the nation, and, if need be, 

 must be paid for by the nation. 



376. Then it will be safe for the Commission to 

 conduct its inquiry on that hypothesis? I think that 

 K what the Commission is asked to do. 



377-8. I understood you to say, in reply to Mr. 

 Cautley, that you considered the style of hind should 

 dictate the form of cultivation. You would not then 

 favour the policy pursued by some Executive Com- 

 mittees, although I do not say it was unnecessary 

 during the war of compelling holders of land to 

 pursue an uneconomic policy with regard to their 



Klifi 



land? I do not think you can do that in future. 

 In the war you could do anything, of course. You 

 had to get the stuff grown. It was not a question 

 always of whether it paid or not. But I do not think 

 an Executive Committee in the future can ask a man 

 to do an uneconomic thing. It may ask him to do 

 what he thinks is uneconomic; but that, if I may 

 say so, is rather a different story. You see, one man 

 may think it is economical to run his land as a 

 rabbit warren. I know men who do maintain that 

 is an economical way of handling quite good land. I 

 hope we shall not allow it. 



379. Them I understood you to say, in answer to 

 Mr. Cautley, that market gardeners could recoup 

 themselves by putting up the price. You do not 

 seriously suggest that the growers of perishable fruit 

 and vegetables can arbitrarily control prices under 

 normal conditions, do you? I do not mean put up 

 prices in that sense ; but they make their own market, 

 do they not, taking it year by year? 



380. I wish they could? You have the market to 

 yourselves pretty well. You have not been really in 

 fact bound by foreign competition. 



381. During the war, you mean? No, before the 

 war. We cannot argue during the war, can ,we? 



Mr. Itobbins : I should not agree with that view 

 before the war, certainly. 



382. Mr. Smith : Can one assume, on the answer 

 you have given, that the farmers to-day, if they have 

 any grievance, it is not because they have not a 

 guaranteed price, but because they are not allowed 

 to get the world's price for their goods? The question 

 of farmers having a grievance is new. 



383. It is not my experience, but I will put it in 

 another way : in so far as the industry is in diffi- 

 culites? It is the future we are looking to, are we 

 not? We are thinking about the future. Our 

 question is what is going to get the farmer to continue 

 to expand his business. 



384. I think we are entitled to consider present 

 facts so far as they are ascertainable? I see, and 

 hear, and learn in various ways, that farmers at the 

 present time are laying down large tracts of their 

 land to grass, and are going out of arable farming 

 because they dread the future. They see, at any 

 rate, that the costs are going up, and they say, " I 

 have no guarantee at all about the prices of my 

 produce, so I am going to set to work to cut down, 

 at any rate, my outgoings." We want to give them, 

 by this policy of guarantees, I say, such a feeling of 

 security that they will not turn the land down to 

 grass, but will continue their arable farming. We 

 cannot continue our compulsion of men to plough 

 uneconomically. 



385. My point was that at the .present moment, if 

 I understood the situation correctly, judging from 

 some of your answers, it is not the guarantee at the 

 moment that would do the industry any good, or 

 giving the farmer a guarantee at the moment 

 because he is complaining of restrictions. I think 

 one of your answers was that the industry was suffer- 

 ing to-day from the restrictions? Do you meian 

 this : that at the present moment farming pays at 

 the current prices and the current prices of labour? 



386. No. I merely want to ascertain whether it 

 was the fact or not that at the moment it is not the 

 absence of the guarantee th'at is handicapping the 

 farmer ? No. 



387. The present world prices are satisfactory to 

 him, or would be if he could get them? That would 

 be very satisfactory, if he could get them. 



388. What is your view as to how far these prices 

 are likely to change? As I have explained, I am 

 more of a believer in prices rising than many 

 people are. I see, I think, reasons, which I tried as 

 well as I could to define, for a continuance of high 

 prices for some time to come. 



389. I understood you to nay that the development 

 of land which produced it ho cheap wheat had almost 

 reached its limit before the war? -That is my own 



. private opinion. 



390. I was just wondering how far it had any 

 bearing on the situation in the direction of per- 



B l! 



