62 THE LAND AND ITS PROBLEMS 



wrong-thinking on this subject — labourers think they have 

 to work for farmer " Smith," and if they slack that they 

 are scoring off Smith, but it is not so ; it is the land itself 

 that demands a certain minimum amount of labour 

 from each and every cultivator, and the man who 

 slacks is cheating the land, and the land will punish 

 him. 



For if the output of work per man sinks below a 

 certain level. Agriculture, the " Land Industry," will 

 suffer and decay, and the workers in the industry will 

 feel despair in their hearts, for there is no feeder to despair 

 like a decaying industry ; with the final result — more land 

 will go down to grass and thousands of men will be 

 driven from the countryside. A grave responsibility 

 rests with the leaders of labour and with the officials 

 of the Trades Unions, for it is they who more than anyone 

 else can enable the labouring men to take a clear view of 

 the situation. And our intelligent and progressive 

 owners and farmers should at all times be ready to confer 

 frankly with these leaders on subjects affecting the welfare 

 and development of agriculture. 



There has been talk of the 48-hour week being applied 

 to agriculture, but how absurd to try to treat agriculture 

 as if it were exactly like the industries carried on under 

 cover and unaffected by the weather ! In some weeks 

 it is impossible to put in more than 30 hours on the land 

 — the quarrel is not so much with the 8-hour day as 

 with the 48-hour week. I believe if a longer period 

 were taken, for example a 208-hour month instead of the 

 48-hour week, the difficulty about bad weather would 

 be largely overcome. Nothing should be done which 

 would put the agricultural industry at a disadvantage 

 as compared with urban industries — it cannot afford it. 

 It is not suggested that the agricultural labourer should 



