284 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



Wages Boards. Those Boards will be able to see to it that 

 no labourer actually employed is paid less than the regula- 

 tion minimum. But they cannot answer for it that such 

 employers as grudge the regulation payment will employ 

 the number of men that are really required to make their 

 farms as productive as the Nation has a right to expect 

 them to be. And in peace time we shall not be able to 

 compel tillage in place of pasture, supposing that both 

 landlord and tenant are content to leave the land under 

 grass. 



For the Nation at large the higher wages now generally 

 clamoured for on the ground of patent justice constitute 

 after all in the main only a means to an end. The Nation's 

 interest is, that there should be sufficiency of labour, in 

 order that what land there is should be made thoroughly 

 productive. In the hour of need — of scarcity of labour — 

 fortunately the weaker sex have once more come forward 

 to fill the depleted ranks of working folk. One may be 

 thankful for this on the country's behalf, as well as on that 

 of the women themselves, and labourer's families. And one 

 may furthermore hope that, although, of course, the 

 '' ladies " grown up in the lap of luxury or of well-to-doness, 

 who have in their enthusiasm offered themselves patrioti- 

 cally as recruits of the " Land Army " for what to them 

 certainly is rough and trying work, will drop out, once 

 normal conditions return, our muscular women of the pea- 

 sant class will remain faithful to the calling — which was 

 their grandmothers', and which was certainly not thought 

 amiss by their ancestresses, but which for some reason or 

 other they, like their mothers, have discarded. Why on 

 earth rural women, of all classes, should have run away from 

 wage labour, when times were notoriously not altogether 

 good, when labour was much needed on the farm, as were 

 shillings in the cottage, and when their sexmates of all 

 other classes were importunately clamouring for even 

 subordinate employment and agitating with truly revolu- 

 tionary ardour for the concession to them of all " Rights 

 of Man " in respect of remunerative occupation, it is not 

 quite easy to understand. Had they offered themselves, 



