148 THE AGRICULTURAL CLUB. 



services have an exchange value as well as goods, and in the long 

 run the value of them is fixed by supply and demand. Just 

 as it is not possible to sell more hats or boots than there are 

 persons wishing to wear them, just as the number and remunera- 

 tion of farmers, as of doctors or lawyers or shopkeepers, are 

 decided by the extent of the demand for the services they can 

 supply to the community, so also the number and remunera- 

 tion of workers in Agriculture must be determined eventually 

 by the amount of work on which they can be profitably employed. 

 In these days it is unfashionable to call attention to anything 

 so antiquated as the law of supply and demand ; but it is not 

 the law, but its application, which has been at fault in regard 

 to labour. When it is used to justify the final settlement of 

 the value of man's services by the " higgling of the market," 

 and by no other consideration, it is recognised as inhuman in 

 its application. 



The trouble, of course, is that, when you give up the old 

 method of paying as little, whether for goods or services, as 

 you can by any means induce the owner of those goods or services 

 to accept, you are left to find some other principle. This is 

 not easy. Some of our modern teachers find no difficulty in 

 laying down a principle for fixing wages. They say that wages 

 must be such an amount as is necessary to maintain the wage- 

 earner in a reasonable standard of comfort. We should probably 

 all agree to this as an abstract proposition, but it is not a simple 

 matter to express an abstract proposition in pounds, shillings 

 and pence. I confess that I find difficulty in conceiving of wages, 

 or even of salaries, in the abstract. They seem to me necessarily 

 to have a very concrete relation to the resources from whence 

 they are paid. There are, no doubt, exceptions, but, in general 

 terms, it must be true that the labour bill in any industry will 

 have some fairly definite relation to the total proceeds of the 

 industry. 



In this elementary consideration of first principles, it may 

 be worth while to recall one or two obvious facts. In the case 

 of farming, the need for both capital and labour is self-evident. 

 For an ordinary farm crop a man must find money for seed, 

 manure, implements, horses and their keep, and also for his own 

 subsistence, for twelve months before he can realise the crop. 

 If he employs more labour than his own he must also advance 

 the whole of the payment for that labour, before he gets any 

 return for it. That is the true function of capital, which, of 

 course, is only another name for accumulated savings. The 

 wage-earner has also to advance his capital which is his labour 

 usually for not longer than a week, though sometimes for 

 longer periods before he gets paid for it. Now, of course, no 

 man will use his savings, i.e., his capital, in trying to grow a 



