AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS 403 



raise rents to their commercial, competitive level, and to reduce his 

 expenditure on repairs and improvements. It is also practically 

 impossible either to draw any definite line between the tenant's 

 common law obligation to farm in a husbandlike manner and the 

 continuous good farming which surpasses that standard, or to 

 establish any permanent starting-point from which the increase or 

 decrease in the letting value of the land, due to the tenant's good or 

 bad cultivation, can be accurately measured. For this latter purpose 

 it has been suggested that the optional record of condition provided 

 by the Agricultural Holdings Act, 1908, might suffice, if made com- 

 pulsory. Apart from the difficulty created by the yearly deprecia- 

 tion of the value of the evidence, and the expense of keeping it up 

 to date by intermediate inventories, the record would be a two- 

 edged weapon. Farmers do not press for its introduction with any 

 enthusiasm or unanimity. They themselves are probably the best 

 judges, whether they will, as a class, gain or lose most by a measure 

 of valuation for the deterioration, as well as the improvement of 

 their holdings. It would be far more to their advantage that, 

 when faced with the alternative of buying or losing their farms, they 

 should be able to obtain from the State on easy terms the whole of 

 the money necessary to effect the purchase. If the loan took the 

 form of a reducible mortgage, repayable by annual instalments, and 

 secured by the right of levying a distress for arrears, there would be 

 little fear of any loss by the lender. No public loan of any magnitude 

 would be immediately required for the purpose. Tenants do not 

 want to buy so long as they can continue to rent under a good private 

 landlord. Unless threatened legislation assumes a form which 

 greatly accelerates the present progress of sales, the sum annually 

 needed would be small. The funds accumulating in the hands of 

 the Insurance Commissioners would supply any demand which 

 may reasonably be anticipated. 



The interests of agricultural labourers apparently conflict with 

 those of their employers. They want high wages and low prices : 

 their employers want high prices and low wages. But the anta- 

 gonism shades off into some identity of interest, for low prices mean 

 less employment or reduced earnings. Agricultural labourers, like 

 landlords and tenant-farmers, suffer from the present political 

 uncertainty and its consequences. If an estate is sold and a farm 

 changes hands, their employment, their wages, and their homes are 

 endangered. Materially, they are without doubt better off than in 



