91 



the best type of small holding, but it seems that the limit in the creation 

 of these holdings has almost been reached. Now, apart from this year, 

 there is occasionally a glut of vegetables, and usually the supply is 

 quite equal to the demand. If you multiply that class of holding you 

 will get a glut and lose a lot of money. The figure of 45 is arrived at 

 by multiplying 17s. 6d. by 52 weeks i.e., the average weekly wages 



?'ven in the Board of Trade return of wages in agriculture in 1907. 

 he figure covers earnings i.e., wages and all perquisites. 



Question : Do I understand that it required 18 persons in Germany 

 to do the work five were doing in the British Isles, and that it took 

 100 acres to feed 70 Germans, and the same area to feed 40 Britishers ? 



Answer : The difference, in part, is due to the fact that there is a 

 much larger proportion of women employed in German agriculture ; 

 and, further, that there is an enormous proportion of small farms 

 there, on which practically all the cultivation is done by manual labour. 



Question : Can the lecturer give us any information as to the relative 

 productivity in America ? Are the big farms more developed there ? 



Answer : I would not compare the American system with our own. 

 In some States they have barely got beyond the process of exhaustion 

 of the virgin soil. If you take the whole of the States, the productivity 

 per acre would not be anything like the same as ours. 



Question : How does Mr. Ashby come to the conclusion that large 

 farms will be beneficial to the agricultural labourer ? 



Answer : It is quite certain that where you get the poorest form of 

 management and the lowest capitalisation, there you get the lowest 

 paid and the lowest type of worker. Wherever you get commercial 

 stimulus in agriculture, as in the Eastern Counties and North-west 

 Lancashire, there you get the most highly paid workman and the best 

 type. 



DISCUSSION. 



MR. T. MACKLEY (National Union of Agricultural Labourers) : 



I am an agricultural labourer by profession, as I left school at nine 

 years of age to go on the land, and what I have learnt in the way of 

 education since has been by the help of such institutions as Ruskin 

 College. At one time I was thrown out of work, with a widowed mother 

 and sister to keep, and I took the place of a town working man quite 

 in ignorance that I was competing with him and cutting down his 

 wages : that is why I took up the work of organising agricultural 

 labour. In last week's Railway Review there is a very fine cartoon 

 where the agricultural labourer is telling the railway worker that his 



